7
Mablung kicked the head seat out from under the table, an ornate inlaid chair in an Eastern design: Cair Andros had several discernibly Oriental influences, and a chair like this would help set visiting dignitaries at ease. I took one look at the sumptuous elegance and collapsed into it crosswise. I had never been one to worry about looks, unless specially requested to do so, and no fancy seat was going to make me start now. Mablung's mouth quirked momentarily and I imagined he was recalling that one nearly-disastrous dinner... I grinned myself and motioned to the only slightly less flamboyant chairs beside mine. Aragorn slipped into one and Mablung circled around behind me to sit on my left; my shadow chose a chair at a nearby table. I watched him, frowning slightly, and Mablung noticed.
"Do you not appreciate your admirer, sir?" I grimaced slightly.
"I have lost some of my tolerance for them on this trip. And him being the first person to greet me here did not help." Mablung shook his head in sympathy.
"He was actually the acting captain here when I arrived." I managed to hold my surprise in mostly, but felt my eyes widen. That lazy fellow? The captain of a fortress of this size? I took what I hoped was an unnoticeable deep breath and spoke.
"How in the name of Mandos did he get such a post? I have yet to see him do anything!" Mablung shrunk back slightly.
"He is the son of Lord Belegorn. I have no interest in generating any ill-will with his dear old daddy, especially considering my tenuous command here, so I have assigned him no acting post." I snorted.
"However you may view him, I have no such fears. Belegorn is hardly a worry to me or Father; I think he needs to learn that he is in the Army, not playing a spoiled rich lad's game. What's his name?"
"Silorn," whispered Mablung, with a half amused, half anxious expression. Aragorn had remained still through the whole exchange, nothing moving except his eyes, but now he stirred slightly. I turned and raised my voice to the young noble.
"Ho, Lord Silorn!" I called, and he started back to the real world from... whatever fantasy he'd been wandering through. "Where is our meal?" The lordling grinned idiotically and almost pranced off to where I supposed the kitchens to be. "Well, at least he'll be away for a little while," I muttered. Mablung smiled wryly.
"I hope none of us get any grief from that..."
"Nonsense," I said, waving a dismissive hand. "Now. What news from home? I confess I had not expected any information more recent than 3 months; thank the Valar you had just arrived." Mablung nodded in agreement, then launched into a brisk description of Gondor, most specifically Osgiliath.
As he spoke, the most important information I learned was about Father. He'd apparently come to depend much more on me than I knew, and without me had not done an exactly stellar job as commander-in-chief. Mablung did not, of course, say so directly, but I picked up that Father's orders were troublingly vague. Moreover, he'd become... irritable might be the best word to describe him. Faramir was taking the brunt of Father's bad mood, resulting in him being restationed to Ithilien since shortly after I left, and kept there since.
As to actual troop placement, Mablung painted an increasingly dismal picture. Father had pulled many men out of the outposts, even abandoning some of them in the South, and had also shrunk Ithilien's guard. I understood that, but would have placed them in Osgiliath myself: Father was packing them into Minas Tirith.
"All of them?" I repeated, absolutely incredulous. "Why all the way back?" Mablung gave a not-my-business shrug.
"Lord Faramir wanted the men in Ithilien, or even Osgiliath, but the Steward seems to fear a great attack sometime very soon. He wishes to be prepared."
Just then Silorn arrived with a large tray. I'd gotten used to the incongruously costly furnishings here, but the platter he was carrying stunned even my eyes. It looked like solid gold, encrusted with-- if not a king's ransom, then at least a high-ranking noble's ransom of jewels. A sizzling steak lay enthroned in the midst of attendant vegetables, and some succulent sauce oozed over it all. The entire room watched him, collective mouth agape, as he made his overloaded way to my table and laid the dish before me. With a fool grin he informed me he'd told the cooks I was hot and tired and dirty from my journey and had demanded a first-class meal: it was the only way to get any decent food.
I closed my mouth and stared in shock. My first impulse was to give him a disciplinary flogging for being a first-class moron, but this was the Army; he hadn't actually broken any rules. But what could the men think of me when I got this ultra-special treatment?
Fortunately, Mablung knew me well enough to know what I was thinking, despite my emotionless face. His mouth twitched slightly to contain a grin and he forced a grim expression. "What is this?" Silorn turned a suddenly resentful and insolent face to Mablung.
"The Lord Boromir requested food. I have brought it. Where am I remiss?" Mablung smiled thinly.
"Perhaps you and I should go talk to the cooks," he replied calmly. "If you'll excuse me." He bowed to the table and led Silorn away with one hand firmly on his shoulder. The entire room watched them go, watched the door close behind them, waited for their steps to fade away-- then burst into raucous laughter. Even Aragorn joined in, which made me feel quite a bit better after that near-fiasco.
Not that I was actually past it, I remembered as I looked down with a final chuckle. The dish was still before me; I thought for a moment, then grabbed an empty wooden trencher and dumped the food into it, pell-mell. I stood with a flourish, then regally placed the trencher in the middle of the center table. "Men," I said, looking around at them with my best benevolent-Captain smile, "dig in." They cheered, more in support of me and my situation than for the food, I think, then formed up and began helping themselves.
I sat back down with a grin and snagged a good-sized hunk of bread from a passing soldier. Aragorn, I found, was still laughing to himself, although he'd now pulled out his pipeweed and was preparing for a smoke. I smirked-- another funny mental picture, this time Aragorn laughing into his pipe and spewing the ashes every which way. He quieted down when he got the pipe going, with only a few sporadic chuckles. I shook my head and began eating the bread.
It was moderately tasteless, although fresh; I guessed the larders of Cair Andros were not as well stocked as the furniture rooms. And there could certainly have been more of it. The jug in the corner the men were filling their cups from was not, as I had thought at first, wine, despite the man standing guard over it-- just a watered-down beer. I guessed that Mablung had more to tell me, and that Cair Andros had been recently attacked, or at least menaced enough to warrant a heightened alert.
Bread and beer finished, I unwound a little in the chair and let my mind run over the immediate future. Firstly: where would we be staying? I had little or no interest in staying the night, but I doubted Mablung could run off this very day. I swallowed the last of the bread and looked around the room; the men had almost all finished and were heading back to their duties. I wondered at the rather loose atmosphere; how did that jibe with the apparent preparations for an imminent attack? I needed to ask some more detailed questions of Mablung.
And here he came: the man himself, now sans-Silorn. Aragorn turned his laconic expression on him as he strode up to the table and stood there, looking at me with a rather large smile.
"...and?" I prompted. Mablung made a token effort at erasing the smile, failed, and launched into his story. By the end Aragorn dropped his pipe he was laughing so hard, and I fared no better.
Seems the cooks hadn't heard thing one from Silorn; they had been preparing the meat as somewhat of a celebration, for all the troops, but on their own initiative. He'd snuck in and somehow swiped the wooden platter, then transferred the contents to that treasure plate he'd come in with. The cooks, of course, had been near frantic trying to locate the roast that had apparently walked off by itself; when Mablung arrived with Silorn, they'd latched onto his guilty expression. The head cook physically threatened to turn Silorn into the next appetizer, and only Mablung's authority rescued the unwise young man from being immediately quartered-- never mind the hanging and drawing. Mablung has always been one of those people who can turn any tale into a side-splittingly funny story, and he really did a fine job this time, imitating everything from the cook's heavy Pelargian accent to Silorn's lightning change of expression (from high-and-haughty to abjectly-terrified).
When I wiped my eyes and Aragorn recovered his pipe, Mablung chuckling all the while, I turned to him.
"Now that you have failed in committing regicide, since we did not quite die of laughter-" Aragorn cracked up again behind me "-when did you plan to leave? If tomorrow, where shall we stay tonight?"
Mablung looked past me at Aragorn, who was now doing his very best to return to a future-king-like regal state and not succeeding, and just shook his head. "I had planned to leave on the morrow. I know not if friend Aragorn shall be ready by then, however, or if he shall still be laughing." Aragorn got back his self-control at that, but I lost mine; Mablung just threw up his hands and grinned.
"It seems my talent is too well-honed! Should there be an Orc attack I have rendered useless two mighty warriors!" Pandemonium-- now Aragorn and me. Finally, Aragorn got up, staggered laughing to the water barrel in the corner, and splashed a full dipper into his face, then returned and did the same for me.
"All right," I said, turning a serious face to Mablung. "We leave tomorrow, and stay where tonight?"
Mablung shrugged. "There are many spare bedrooms, some of them for dignitaries so they are quite sumptuous. We can easily put you in one, Aragorn in the other."
"Very well," put in Aragorn before I could speak. "Lead on; then we shall do what we may about the fortress. There yet remains much of the day."