The Captain is one sharp-eyed fellow. He has noticed that the wolf legions of Mordor never seem to suffer supply problems like the rest of their force- they can still ride all night and fight all day, so to speak. After a few hours of investigation, he has discovered that the wolves eat their fallen comrades, gleaning sustenance in abundance off of every battleground.

First off, this is revolting. Uruks are unpleasant enough without adding them to the dinner menu.

Second, now that we know how they feed, we can hear opportunity knocking. The Old Man cooks up a scheme to put a serious stitch in the side of the other team

First, Webfoot launches an amphibious campaign up and down the coast, trying to locate the Black Numenorean and pin him down. Once they find him and force him into fighting them, Webfoot sets up massive fires fueled by enemy corpses and generous doses of naptha. This signals Bullet and Salim to start a major offensive to the northwest, far away from that pale little bastard's sphere of influence. They retake a few miles of land, slaying thousands and reveling in the resulting chaos. Reinforcements can't arrive in time to check them, due to the general squalor and starvation and lack of command structure in their organization. Hell, if we had three times our numbers, we probably could have had them dead to rights in this stroke alone, but there you are. With only 4,000 effectives on the attack, we can only do so much before getting bogged down and losing momentum.

We make good use of the breathing space Bullet and Salim's advance brought us.

I am the one in charge of Operation: Corpse Greaser, as the uruks under my command have dubbed it. You see, the manufacturing centers around the Sea of Nurnen stock plenty of poisons; some subtle and elegant, and some as blunt and unapologetic as a hammer blow. Me and my command take it all and advance just behind our attacking comrades, sprinkling each corpse we find with some of the nastiest shit that Mother Nature and the Red Eye's imagination can produce.

I disliked the operation's name at first, but I suppose that a bad joke that's made a mile behind the lines becomes hilarious once you get into the thick of it. By the time I'm through daubing wolf-death onto the fallen enemy, I'm cracking horrible jokes and making tasteless puns like the rest of my uruks.

A message from Pork Chop summons me to his makeshift hospital in Czernograd.

"So, how did it go?" Pork Chop doesn't even bother to look up from his work as he addresses me- a silent, pale uruk with a wide gash in his abdomen is in need stitches and painkillers, though we had no painkillers available. Early on, we had confiscated every ounce of hashish from the men, but that has long since ran out.

"What?"

"The poisoning thing." He carefully snips off the thread and pats the uruk on the shoulder, as though out of obligation and habit, then sends for the next one. The new guy is missing his left hand. "Corpse Greaser."

"Eh."

"That good, huh."

"It worked. I mean, no drama on that front." I quash my instinct to rush outside as Pork Chop cauterizes the stump with a hot iron. I've been in the business for a long time, but I'm still uncomfortable around the medical side of things. Too much time spent in armies whose idea of medical care is primitive at best. I remember being astounded when I joined the Company and found out that more of us die on the field than in the hospital tent. "But I can't say it was at all enjoyable. Must've been 4,000 corpses we smeared that shit on. Not a fucking day at the park, you know? Crap jokes aside."

"I hear you." The uruk, who had remained stock still as his left wrist burned, nodded as calmly as he could and staggered away carefully, trying not to show how whoozy he was. The next came in. This one had a broken off arrow through his knee.

"Of course," I add, as Pork Chop saws away at the arrowhead on the other side, "I don't imagine that all the blood and guts I had to wade through would stir much sympathy from you. I mean..."

"Yeah, whatever." The uruk squeals in torment as Pork Chop slides the wood out of his leg. "There you go. Smooth as anything. Some of you guys will do anything to get out of walking, eh?"

The uruk nods his head, eyes wide and neck tilted. "Ha," he gasps. "Lazy-ass Parckaz, they call me. I'm a fucking sloth."

Pork Chop grins, deftly concealing whatever is happening on the inside. "That's the spirit. Send the next one in, please."

Then, to me; "Hey, listen, you got the Captain's ear, yeah?"

I close my eyes and looked away from the black blood that's pooling on the stone floor. "Sort of, yes."

"Them tell him this, from me. I'd tell him myself, but I got a lot on my hands at the moment, and I'm not sure he'd listen to me. Tell him we can't keep this up anymore."

"I'm not sure if it's my place to correct the Old Man's tactics, Pork."

"No, listen, I ain't talking about tactics or strategy or nothing. I'm talking about cold, hard facts. If we keep charging forward aggressively, swapping body shots and shit, we're going to start losing wounded simply because there won't be enough of me to go around. I can barely keep up the demand as it is."

The next guy has come in. It's a Company brother, a man named Dizzy who has a dagger plunged into his belly. I suspect that Dizzy's a dead man already, but what are we going to do, send him away again? Pork Chop sits him down and gets to work.

"Tell the Captain, defense only. I can only stay on top of things if he stops sending me new legions of broken bodies to fix up every hour on the fucking hour. Tell him that, will you?"

I depart, holding a hand over my mouth and nose to block the stench of blood and fear and infection gone rampant. Outside Pork Chop's surgery room, there's a line of a bit less than 300 men holding themselves stiffly, seeping blood from various holes in their bodies and/or missing significant portions of themselves. In addition to the room I'm exiting, there are three other groups taking in the casualties- there's Pork Chop's apprentice Wee Lad, an uruk shaman who has some slight knowledge of piecing people back together, and three recruits who had volunteered for the duty. I doubt that the newcomers knew how to even stitch someone up before Pork Chop taught them how.

I pass Pork Chop's message on, with my recommendation that the Captain ought to take it seriously.

Operation: Corpse Greaser is a rousing success. We just wiped out over half the wolves in the enemy host in a single day.

Hooray.

I hope that we can survive another victory like this one.

The other team is knocking on our front door in Czernograd. They immediately threw 10,000 men into our defenses and watched them get chopped to pieces. We've been setting up shop here since we took over, which they found out the hard way. They fall back, discouraged and bleeding, and then grudgingly set up barricades to prevent us from sallying.

They have litte food. They cannot function, not as well as they need to. But this is our last line of defense. Behind us is flat, gentle farmland and small towns with weak defenses. We have no place else to run. We have to stand here and fight it out as best we can.

5,000 of us against 40,000 of them. We have homefield advantage and all the time in the world.

Confidence in our victory is shaky, but omnipresent. Every one thinks we can do it, but no one is sure that we will do it.

The enemy host ran out of arrows. Their archers, rearmed with bucklers and long knives, join the infantry in the trenches.

Our crossbowmen and uruk archers are thrilled beyond reason. Now, instead of having to play at sniper duels with obstinate opponents, they can just set up massive shooting contests amongst themselves, picking off the enemy one grunt at a time, often betting on who can score the most confirmed kills. If you believe the bowmen, we wiped out over 10,000 enemy soldiers, though I put it closer to 300. The other team learns quickly to hug the dirt properly, so we're not exactly inflicting massive amounts of casualties.

And then things get into a dull routine, with them digging their trenches closer and closer to our walls while we snipe their engineers as often as possible.

Once they get close enough, things will start up again.

The balance of power on the Sea of Nurnen has shifted unexpectedly.

Near the start of the campaign, just a few short weeks ago, the other team had tried to put some ships in the water to counter-act Webfoot's predations. Their attempt to wrest naval supremacy from us was half-hearted and shortlived- Webfoot had contemptuously boarded the poorly constructed crafts, butchered the crew, and then sent the boats back to Grufoz in flames.

Their second attempt this morning was far more successful.

One moment, our marines were basking in the dull morning sun (for the sunlight is always dull in Mordor), shipping out to wreak some havoc on the western coast, chopping throrugh the bitter water at a fair pace. Then, the sea around them starts boiling, and to their surprise, the boiling spot follows them at the same speed they're going. They slow down, the boiling pool of water slows down; they haul ass and try to lose it, it keeps pace.

The boiling water surrounds two ships of the eight total in our navy.

And when the crews lean out over the railings to try and get a closer look at the churning water, massive pale tentacles come out and snatch them into the water. Before the surviving marines jerk away from the sides of their ships, they see the thrashing water turn black with blood.

For the two ships that were attacked, it is merely the beginning of the end. The tentacles are relentless and swift. When the marines try to seek shelter beneath the deck, the tentacles crash through the panelling and smash the crafts into splintered wood and torn bodies. The monstrous white arms then sift through the wreckage, seeking any survivors and dragging them down into the thrashing waters, into the depths...

The other six ships in our little armada were powerless to help- they're designed for shipping, not war. They had no built in ballistas, no ramming spikes. Webfoot tried shooting arrows into the boiling water, but the monsters didn't seem to even notice.

Webfoot called his men home to Czernograd before the tentacle monsters can target his six remaining ships.

In the space of a few heartbeats, our marine corps loses 72 men out of 346.

We'll have to keep an eye on Webfoot. He sounded almost monotone when he gave his report.

Shatarz and several other veterans of the Mines of Moria have stepped forward and volunteered information. They had worked with a monster matching the marines' descriptions- they had slipped him into a largish pool by the western end of the Mines, carried by underground currents from who knows where. When the dwarves tried to sally out of that end, they discovered that the tentacles could reach onto the shore, so they retreated back into the blood-stained dark to avoid getting dragged into the water.

Shatarz's reports are not encouraging. He had never actually seen the monster in its entirety, just the tentacles and its actions. He has no idea how to kill it without entering the water and swimming down to the body that the arms are attached to- an approach that we prefer not to try if at all possible.

Webfoot broods, then approaches the Captain to gain access to our captured stores of poisons. He stocks up every ounce of nasty shit we have and stows it onboard, then takes to the seas looking for blood.

He returns three hours later, at dusk, missing another ship.

The Captain sends me to debrief him, since Webfoot's intel needs to get into the Annals as well as into his hands.

I debated with myself on how to handle the situation- should I be pure professionalism, concerned only with facts and figures and allow no room for emotion? Should I seek to be empathetic, to help Webfoot process his loss? What, if anything, is the right way to do this?

Finally, I decided to just ask him how it went and play it by ear.

Webfoot and I were in my tent, early into the night. Having more privacy then I actually needed, there were few passers-by and no interruptions.

He looked like hell. He picked up a slight injury on the left side of his face, a jagged crimson slash across his cheek; I imagine it came from a flying splinter. His shoulders were slumped, and he sat like a man too tired to remain upright.

"I know you all got beaten up," I tell him, "but did you get them?"

"No. They don't like all the shit we put in the water, but they were alive when we disengaged," He breathes deep, lets it out in a ragged rush of exhaustion. "They swarmed over Blackhawk's ship, the both of the little fuckers. One started in on the bow, the other on the stern. Those boys never had a chance."

"I'm sorry." Even to my ears it sounded stupid.

Webfoot waves his right hand and shakes his head. Not a drama. "It felt like Pelennor, Papa. Just like when we had to watch those poor fucks on the right get outflanked by the Rohirrim. Except this time it was my boys and not total strangers."

Webfoot hawks and spits in the direction of the Sea. "I'll figure out how to beat those fucking tentacle monsters. Just you fucking wait."

He did. Sort of. Each ship now carries a few barrels of poison every time it goes out. Standard procedure for them is to keep a sharp eye out for boiling water. If spotted, the whole crew dips their blades and arrowheads into the poison barrels, then sloshes a couple of gallons of liquid death over the side. Then they form square in the center of their ships. I'm sure that there's a techinical term for the middle part of the boat, but hell, I'm a lubber.

The monsters don't like getting close to that rancid shit, and even if they overcome their apparent revulsion, they can't snag many people and rag them overboard.

Stalemate, of a kind. Our sea mobility has been greatly neutralized- we do not have sufficient ships to mount the kind of amphibious assaults that Webfoot loves so much. But nor can the other team try to bypass Czernograd by sea.

So we lost a lot of good men in exchange for not a whole lot.

I hope all the brevet-privates in our army are paying attention, because this kind of bull crap happens to us all the fucking time.

The other guys come at us, we greet them with a hail of missiles, and then we both get down to the grim business of hacking each other up. Same shit, different day. And after they retreat, we all lick our wounds and grab some grub.

Whoop de fucking do.

Are you happy, Captain, sir? I've updated the Annals, just like you asked. Did they need to be updated? Did anything of interest or import occur since the last time I wrote? Hell no, of course not.

I truly can't wait for this tired little campaign to wind up. My only consolation is that the other team is about a bazillion times more miserable than we are.

I consider myself a generally optimistic man. I can usually make the best of anything that life chooses to throw at me, I can stay positive and look on the bright side and so on.

However, I can't ignore reality when it hits me right between the eyes.

We're going to lose. I wish to fuck I could see some distant ray of hope, but it's just not there.

From the south just past the Mountains of Shadow, well-armed and bloodthirsty tribesmen are streaming over the mountain. From what Ghazi's scouting expedition gleaned, they number approximately 3,000, all fanatically loyal to the Red Eye and positioned worryingly close to our supply depots in South Nurn. Oh, we could turn around and whup them hard, but manpower, manpower! We can't destroy them and have enough men to fight the raggedy-ass host besieging us in Czernograd. So we send the Auxilaries off the front lines to go Southron hunting. 450 warriors against 6 times their number. Dwarves and elves are badasses, no doubt, but they have to cover such a large area from such a large force...

In the East, a fresh block of Variags numbering 2,000 are aiming to march down the eastern shore and wreck everything in their path. We do not have soldiers anywhere near that area, nor the means to transport them there, so all we can do is let them march and reinforce Angnar once they link up with the Southrons.

On the high seas, Webfoot makes little progress fighting the sea monsters. It's as close to a stalemate as it's going to get- they can't close in on our remaining marines, but our marines can't touch them at all. But since the stalemate prevents us from mounting any amphibious offensive, they won from a strategic viewpoint.

There's just too fucking many of them and not nearly enough of us. If only the main host across the lines to the north would up and starve to death already, we could turn and rip apart the two smaller armies. But Saintly can't kill enough of the supply wagons to choke them to death instantly, so they're dying slowly. Too fucking slowly.

Once our own supply caches start getting hit by the Southron savages, we won't be much better off.

I think that when we deserted the army of Mordor and came here to recover our Annals, we made a bad bet, and now we're going to get burned. We may well have to pay double, just like in Tonk.

Just general progress report.

Webfoot managed to drive one of his tentacle monsters into shallow water on the southern shore. His boys rammed poisoned pikes down into the water aiming at it blobbish body, while archers sent shafts into its' thrashing arms. The monster died hard, apparently. Really hard. So Webfoot dragged its carcass onto dry land just to make sure it was going to stay dead. In killing it, he lost another two ships. So he may have reduced his obstacles, but his capabilities diminished as well. I don't think we'll ever regain the momentum on the seas- I suspect that soon his bold marines are going to be strictly land troops.

Angnar's dead. By all accounts he died well, like that means anything; he fell charging with three other elves headlong into a pack of Southrons in order to cover his men's retreat. A dwarf named Grimhald took command. I know nothing about him, other then that he has been given an impossible job that he doesn't dare fail. Poor little bastard.

Things still gridlocked in Czernograd. Our casualty rate had dwindled greatly in that area, as Salim has been steadily whipping the vinegar out of the oppostion.

Provisions to get the Annals out of Czernograd have been made. We picked the toughest, most durable men we have, and tell them upfront that the survival of their new family depends on them. I am aboard a barge with the Annals, floating down the Ephel Duath towards the section of the mountain range that borders nominal Gondorian territory.

Amin with the Standard. Myself with the Annals. 68 roughnecks armed to the teeth. We just need to hike through the narrow, twisty paths of the Ephel mountains to reach vaguely friendly territory of Ithilien. At which point we tell the Gondorians that, no, really, we are on their side now, and never mind that we once tried to wipe Minas Tirirth off the map.

Obviously, gaining the locals' trust will be difficult. But as long as we are alive and have our past intact, we'll power through anything.

However, we are not abandoning our brothers. We'll stick around until we actually lose. We're not cowards running from the fight. We're just... more practical than honorable, that's all.

I am stationed at the foot of the Ephel Duath, far from the grim slaughter and hectic mayhem of the front lines. Life here is calm, if decidedly nervous. I sleep well in my little makeshift shelter, without being disturbed by the screaming and horrific smells and constant tension of trench warfare.

When I went to sleep last night, I had a dream. Maybe it was just an ordinary, run of the mill dream, or maybe it was something else. I don't know. But I'm assuming it's the real deal, and so I record it.

I don't know where I was. At the time it all seemed quite natural and it was perfectly obvious where I was and what I was doing there, but you know how dreams are.

Sapper was there. He looked compact and muscular- nothing at all like the chubby litle spitfire I knew. His face, brown to start with and tanned by decades spent on the march, was now transformed into a noble and even handsome countenance. This was the face of a wisdom and power, containing both grace and dignity. I barely recognized him, of course, looking like that. After the intial confusion, we got to talking.

"Is this a dream?" I remember asking him. I remember having looked around at my environment. Whatever I saw seemed normal enough, but I can't remember it.

"Yes. Or, no, not really. Sort of." Ah. Sapper's face may have changed drastically, but his speech had not. Still the same old barely hidden contempt for people dumber than he is. "It looks like a dream, feels like a dream, and obeys the same rules as dreams. But it is not a dream."

"Uh huh. Is there any particular reason you look like a body builder with the face of a wise sage?"

Sapper looks annoyed. Well, he always looks annoyed, but now he looks it even more so. "Don't push me, Jack."

"What? It was just a question."

"In these kinds of not-dream, your self-image gets projected into public. Occasionally, things get a little... embarassing."

I grin. "You see yourself as a cross between the the Grey Walker and a bare knuckle boxer."

"Don't. Push. Me."

"That's..." I search for the most appropriate insult. "That's adorable, Sapper. You really think you're the resident wise man?"

"Well, it's better than you."

I look down at myself. "As far as I can tell, I am unchanged."

He chortles. "Of course you do. When I look at myself, I see the fat old geezer that I always see. It's only when others see you that your self-image comes out."

"What do I look like, then?"

"LIke a young man, not out of his teens. All lean and fit and full of piss and vinegar."

"Oh." Not out of my teens. And here I thought that I had moved on from my family.

"Mind you, yours ain't too bad. Old fella like you, who can blame you for remembering when you were younger and stronger? The worst offender so far is Saintly."

"Oh?"

"When I tried this on him, he looked like one of the villains in a bad piece of Umbar street theater. All wrapped up in a black leather cloak, hooded and cowled and sinister and shit. Like the world's gaudiest assassin."

"That shouldn't have come as a surprise."

"I know, right?" Sapper puts on his best grin, but I can tell his heart's not in it. "I contacted you for a reason, mate. What's the situation like down there?"

I fill him in. Easterners and Southrons swarming in our soft spots. That fucking Numenorean prick holding the main host together and pressing down hard on Czernograd. Webfoot joining up with Grimhald to create a mobile defense.

Although, I do not recall actually telling him this. I seem to remember a vague draining sensation from my skull. Like I was bleeding info and he was collecting it. It was weird, but in dreamland it felt natural enough

"Shit," Sapper says. He draws the word out to almost three syllables. "Fucking hell, and other comments."

"Since do you speak fluent uruk?"

"I reckon we're dead," he says matter-of-factly, ignoring my witticism completely. "I'm here to pass on some fairly bad news, and if you combine it with the shitstorm you're dealing with down south... Yeah. We're fucked left, right, and center."

"Tell me."

"The Gondorian army- if you can call it that- is closing in on the Black Gate."

I stare at him with dull, tired eyes.

"Yes, you heard me. We have about two days, tops."

"How do you know? You can't have scouted that far north."

"Spike and Bop went to work on prisoners from three separate regiments. All of them gave independent confirmation, unaware of the other two. All agreed the clash will occur within a week. That was almost a week ago, Jack. And once the Gondorians bite the dust, well. They'll swarm," he states with gloomy relish. "They'll swarm right across Gorgoroth and just throw waves of warm bodies at you until you break."

"How many troops do you think will get sent wouth after our Western buddies get curb-stomped? 100,000? At least?"

"More than that. One of the guys we caught was from fucking Rhun, man. That's, like, three hundred miles north of here. Sauron the fucking Putrid is gathering fresh troops from every corner of his little empire. I'd say there'll be about 300,000. A bit less, if the Gondorians get the same kind of unholy luck they had on Pelennor. But it'll be well over a measly little 100 grand." He favors me with a sickly smile.

"Oh, fuck it," I spit out bitterly. "We should never have stuck around. We should have picked up our Annals and hightailed it out of Nurn before the Eye could catch up to us."

Sapper shrugs. A good enough answer, by any standard.

I know why we didn't, of course. There were 10,000 of us then. How do you feed that many men? Equip them? We had no choice but to stick around the industrial and agricultural base that is the Sea of Nurnen. Moreover, where could we go? Back down south, where every tribesman and his mother takes orders from Barad-dur? East and north are right out- we have no idea of what's out there, and how far the Dark Lord's influence reaches. Even if we found a neutral state, what king or warlord would welcome 10,000 heavily armed strangers onto his turf? The only other option was west, where every single fucking nation has reason to kill us. And if they decided to accept us, well, then we'd be right where we are now- outnumbered and facing extinction.

Fuck it. Just, fuck it all. The deck was stacked against us from the start.

If only the fucking gods had left well enough alone on Pelennor, we wouldn't be here now.

I wrench my attention back to the miniature muscle-bound sorceror. "We have the Annals and Standard ready to be evacuated. The Company will survive, at least for a while."

"Yeah. I guess. And hey, if you all die hard enough down there, it'll be years, maybe decades until Mordor is ready to start conquering again. You can't forge an empire without a industrial and agricultural base, and I don't think the Cap will leave so much as a mill wheel standing by the time you all... Yeah." He scratches his arm awkwardly. "You can get all them elves and dwarves and Westrons whipped into shape in that time." Sapper shrugs again, this time more optimistically. "Me, Saintly, and the boys won't be around to see you all rise again from the ashes, but in the meantime we'll stir shit up till they catch us."

"Aye. Well. Best of luck in your guerrilla campaign."

"Thanks. Enjoy convincing all those dumb-ass westerners that you're legit. Make sure you bring that Gondorian lass, what's-her-face."

"Zim."

"That's the one. Things'll go smoother if you got a white face vouching for you."

We shook hands, and I woke up again. I'm operating on the assumption that I was not having just a mere nightmare about 300,000 screaming fighters descending upon us, so I sent a rider to headquarters to inform the Captain about the impending doom. Then I sat and wrote this entry.

I have nothing to do right now, and I suspect that it will be a few weeks before I can be of any use to anyone at all. So I think I'll go outside and star gaze for a while- just sit upright, arms propped behind me and chin pointed straight up, and soak in their celestial glory. I've had little opportunity to enjoy any kind of beauty in Mordor.