Ahem. I knew that last chapter was number eight. I was just testing you. Yup. ^-^;;;

Cheers to Melime, Soledad, and yay for my new person, Nerwen Something-I-can't-spell! By the way, Nerwen, we should form some kind of an authors' group or something, Writers of Stories about Countries Not Really In the Books Much... i've been reading your stories about Khand, and they're good!

Ortaine Gamgee - luckily, nothing much happened in the second chapter. ^-^ Pretty much, she went to where the soldiers were all meeting to go off to war, and now she's marching out into the desert with them. Well, not now. But at the end of the second chapter. You know what I mean. Stupid code... *mumblegrumblemumble*

I know, Melime, about good stories not getting reviews - ironic, isn't it? But I'm not bitter. Nope. Not at all.

Disclaimer: Disclaimer is a funky word. Whee...
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Chapter Nine: Foreign Soil (Not Sand)

When Saali, Tai, Reni and Sir Captain Nineyi returned all in one piece, some of the men were incredulous. No one went into the palace seeking punishment and came out alive, why had Sir and the King let her live, she was a danger to them all, what did they intend to do with her, could she fight, blah, blah, blah. Saali tuned them out after a few minutes.

On the other hand, some of the men were gone. So Saali supposed, listening to Sir curse the deserters loudly and unabashedly, that to be there and rebellious was better than not to be there at all.

When Sir finished cursing, he made an announcement. "Tasaali, daughter of Eishali, is now a member of our regiment. She will serve as a spy against our enemy, the Rangers of Ithilien. I do not expect ANY of you to give her any trouble. UNDERSTAND?" His tone did not make one inclined not to understand. An undercurrent of mutterings went through the troops. Saali did not look up. Feet were very interesting things.
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Nikat, son of Yasha, stood among his fellow soldiers and gazed piercingly at the woman who looked at the ground. Where did she come from? What made her want to be a soldier, when men went to extremes to avoid the draft? She was mysterious. Perhaps she was not cursed, like the rest of the widows.

Fate will most likely strike me down for thinking that, or so the Fatespeakers would tell us, he mused.

His friends jabbed him. "What is wrong with Sir? He is being even more daft than usual, letting this widow take such an important job. Look at her!" growled Anrami. Nikat did not tell him that he was already doing so.

"We shall all die," announced Panim in his usual cheerful manner.

Nikat nodded, though his head was heavy with questions.
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Saali marched with the soldiers this time exiting the city, although "with" may have been an overstatement. They all ignored her and walked slightly ahead of her, with one exception. One tall, thin soldier, with delicate features beneath the rim of his helmet, kept glancing back at her with startling brown eyes, lighter than his skin. She met his gaze evenly the second time, and glared at him the third. She was not in the mood for these games.
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That night, they met an obstacle they had not expected. The errand man, serving as a tent-deliverer, gave Kentai a tent and left without a second glance at Saali.

"Er. Now that everyone knows..." Saali squirmed uncomfortably. "Do you not think..."

"Hm?" Tai was busy hammering stakes into the sand with his sword-hilt.

"We only have one tent," she reminded him. "People will, er... talk..."

Sir, who had been hanging about Saali all that day like a bird watching its prey, only in a slightly less predatory fashion, came out of nowhere. "This is a problem," he asserted loudly.

"Yes. It is," Saali agreed.

"We have no more tents. I could... give you a blanket, to hang in the middle of the tent for privacy, I suppose. Yes. That is it. That is what we will do," he announced, and fled to find a blanket.

Tai grinned. "Who wants to have their own tent, princess, when they can sleep with me?"

"In your tent, not WITH you," Saali snapped, and did not speak to her tentie for the rest of their blanket-separated night.
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They marched for day after sweaty day, night after frigid desert night. Indeed Saali wondered what they intended to do with her when they got there, wherever they were going. She had no idea how to be a spy. She did not even know what she would find in this strange land called Gondor.

One day, when they had come to the region of the desert that was filled with a smattering of cacti, bushes and what would have been flowers if there had been any rain lately, she began to see a dark greenish line along the horizon. It grew thicker as they walked. At first, Saali thought it was a mirage - she was rationing her water, which basically meant she was thirsty ALL the time, so she was prone to mirages. But it stayed with her throughout the day, and at dusk, she sat with Reni as Tai pitched the tent.

"You have been to enemy country before, have you not?" she asked softly. "What is that? There, on the horizon."

Reni got out his trusty pen and paper. TREES. TREE IS LIKE CACTUS WITH LEAVES. AND BIG.

"How very odd. How big?"

Reni gestured up toward one of his mumaks, whose leg he leaned against.

"THAT big?" Saali yelped, looking up at the towering creature. Gondor was strange indeed. "I would not want to be speared on one of those!"

NO THORNS.

"Oh. That is even odder." Saali frowned at the horizon. What strange land were they going to? She knew nothing here, was of no use. She denied that the feeling in her stomach was fear.

Reni scribbled swiftly, obviously wanting to say more than he could on paper. It was at these moments that Saali wondered how he kept his vow of silence. Finally, he held up his pad: TARKS CALL IT ITHILLYENN. WE CALL IT THE LEAF CITY. IS STRANGE - YOU WILL SEE.

"I am sure it is," the widow murmured, the thick green line reflected in her eyes as the daylight gave way to night.

She was so focused on not focusing on anything that she didn't notice when Tai crept up behind her.

"Tent up, princess!" he chirped.

Saali jumped a foot. "Do not call me princess!" she yelped. Once she got her breath back, she remembered what she had meant to ask him. "What, er... what happens once we get there, anyway?"

"We fight. The tarks are good skirmishers - they hide in the trees, all dressed in green, and they shoot at us when we least expect it." For just a moment, Saali thought she saw sadness cross her cheerful friend's face. "We lost half our men last time. That was my first time in battle." He paused, gritting his teeth. His eyes took on a sort of haunted look. "Good men. They dropped like flies when the first volley hit. We did not have time to think. Some were friends of mine. They did not deserve to die." Suddenly, he sighed and grinned again. "And that is why you are needed, prin - er, lady. To find out when they will strike and where, so we will never least expect it." Reni nodded, features grim.

Saali wondered how she was expected to find that out. Also, if memories of a battle could somber Kentai, she was not quite sure she wanted to see battle herself.

For a moment, the three were silent. The air was thick with one question - why were they fighting, anyway? What was in it for them?

The silence was broken by an unfamiliar sneering voice. "How romantic."

Tai whirled, obviously startled, and seemingly recognized the man. "Good evening, Private Anrami," he said in his mock-formal voice.

Anrami glared at him through squinting black eyes, which Reni met with a glare twice as intense from practice. He was flanked by a man with a very long face in both senses, and the tall bright-brown-eyed man who had looked at Saali before - his backup, she wondered? Brown-eyes had a strange expression on his face as he looked from his leader to Tai to Saali and back again. "Sharing a private moment, are we?"

"We are not," Tai answered articulately. Saali got the feeling he didn't like the man from the vicious aspect of his grin.

"Has she ever seen battle before, I wonder?" Anrami mused, seemingly to himself but obviously aimed at the widow. "Or will she run screaming at the sight of blood?"

"No," Saali said curtly and icily.

"Or will she laugh," Anrami's long-faced companion intoned morosely, "as we are all shot? Although we would probably die anyway, even if she had not brought this curse upon us."

Saali did not respond to that, choosing instead to stare stony-faced at the men.

"I am sure many would rejoice, were you to be shot," Tai commented quite cheerfully.

Anrami took a menacing step forward, and leaned so that his rather large nose was about an inch from Kentai's. His eyes were so squinted by now, they were barely visible. "We do not want her among us. She is cursed. She is not welcome."

"I am sure you would get your message across much more easily if you spoke directly to me," Saali informed him flatly. Her voice only trembled a tiny bit.

"She ought to get used to not being spoken to," Anrami hissed into Kentai's face.

Kentai tweaked his nose.

The other man gave a cry of outrage and jumped back. He squinted at Kentai, furious, and for a moment Saali expected a full-fledged fistfight to ensue. But, eventually, he drew a deep breath. "You are truly mad, Kentai. But no matter. You may be cursed if you so wish, and the mute, as well."

The one who was not mute took the opportunity to spit dangerously close to the boots of the one who had accused him of being mute.

Anrami ground the spit violently into the sand with his heel, turning his squint on Reni for the moment. "She has no experience. She shall faint at her first good sight of the tarks. You mark my words. And we shall not speak to her, the wench."

"Good," Saali spat.

Anrami spun on his heel and strode off, followed closely by his right- and left-hand men. Bright brown eyes met her black ones for a moment, then looked away.

"May the Faceless Ones eat your remains!" Kentai called happily after them.

Saali did not bother to ask who the Faceless Ones were - most of Tai's curses didn't make sense, anyway. She slipped into the tent, cuccooned in her bedroll, and sunk into sleep with a heavy heart and a feeling like a knife plunged deep into her gut, a feeling she had tried so hard to avoid since she was widowed, but still it returned. Perhaps the knife was always there, and experiences like this just grabbed it and twisted it by the hilt until she had no choice but to notice the pain.
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Saali was breathless as the soldiers entered the great Leaf City. Trees truly were strange things - large brown scaly pillars covered at the top by a carpeting of leaves, like strange, short green hair. Parts of the pillars extended outward and split off, like veins, to support the leaves, which were thin and papery, not at all like the fat-juicy cactus leaves of the desert. Being in "Ithillyenn" was like being in a very large room with a breeze.

And how cold it was! And how windy! Such a strange place! So chilling! And so shady! And how ALIVE everything was! And how green! Even the ground was covered with green fuzz! And the ground was so... squishy! And wet! Were they still in the same world? And -

"Keep up, Tasaali," Sir barked as he walked beside her. He had insisted that she walk up front with him. "You must pay attention to this route, know it like the creases of your palm. You will know how to get to our hideout from all directions. Learn the landmarks."

Saali looked around, but all the trees and various other green things looked exactly the same to her. Landmarks? She held her tongue, and took the opportunity to listen to all the strange noises that surrounded them. Birds, perhaps, were making them, or small animals? They did not sound like the little cactus owls or the hissing of the desert lizards and snakes. Saali wondered vaguely if they had scorpions in the Leaf City - many a panicked shout had been heard in the camp when a scorpion had been discovered in a sleeping bag.

Soon, they crested a grassy hill, dotted with strange flowers and sprouting bushes like hair. On the way back down, Sir looked in all directions, then stamped twice on a large, flat rock Saali hadn't noticed a moment ago. He then leaned down so that his mouth nearly touched the rock and spoke a Haradic word - "Kuleshna!"

There was a long pause, then a rumbling that sounded like it came from inside the hill, and suddenly, the rock sprang up out of the ground and was hefted aside by many hands. Friendly voices called out to them in Haradic, beckoning them down the dark tunnel that had been revealed by the removal of the rock.

Sir knelt and slipped down into the dank darkness below, motioning for Saali to follow. "Last one in closes it up again!" he shouted up at the soldiers from the depths.

Saali gulped and let herself drop. Her feet hit the ground hard, and she almost fell before stumbling blindly downhill, guided by random arms and hands of the people who had opened the way. After what felt like an age, the rocky ground leveled out, and they emerged into a huge torchlit cave. It appeared to be natural; there were stalactites and stalagmites in abundance, and murky pools dotted the floor. What looked to be a regiment of soldiers much like Captain Nineyi's was camped among the pools, and there was still space for another. Not a very pleasant place to camp, but a useful one.

"What IS this?" she wondered aloud as she gazed around. A few of the soldiers who had helped her along now stared at her and whispered amongst themselves. Saali ignored them.

"It was discovered at the start of the war by accident, when a man fell down the tunnel," Sir told her with a snort that was clearly directed at clumsy-incompetent soldiers. "And it has been our base ever since. Not very cozy, but you get used to it. You will report back here after all your errands."

Saali nodded, then thought for a moment. "The password," she said slowly at long last.

"Yes?"

"It is 'pineapple'?" she inquired, a smile teasing her lips.

"Well, the tarks will not figure that one out, will they?" Sir said quite reasonably.