Chapter 11: City of the Dead / The Gift

Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli watched the huge mustering of Orcs approach steadily across the frozen landscape in disbelief. Gimli rubbed his eyes. He looked critically at his flask of Dwarven liquor, tossed it away into the snow, and stared again. He muttered something about needing a bigger axe.

"This is impossible!" cried Legolas incredulously. "There's no way an army that size could be here! The borders of the Dark Lords realm are hundreds of miles south of here, we would have heard if he was advancing to war!"

"More to the point," Gimli chipped in, "what would they want with a place like this? There's nothing here that would interest Sauron or his Orc captains anymore, and precious little to be had in the way of victuals for an army that size." He hefted his all-too-light pack. "And I should know," he added as an afterthought.

"It matters not," said Aragorn. "There's something amiss about this whole business, but that is a puzzle for later. We cannot meet that lot, so we have but one choice – to enter the ruined city. With haste!"

"Just one moment, laddie," grumbled the dwarf, "I don't run from Orcs. Now, if we stand together, we can fight like men and keep our honour. What do you say to that?"

Hearing no response, he looked behind him to see Aragorn and Legolas running full pelt towards the gate, with shameless self-preservation.

He snorted, "I see Legolas has lived up to his name and legged it." He turned, and sprinted after them with the grace that only certain very short people can call upon. "Why am I always this funny when no-one's around?" he wondered.

Meanwhile the Orc advance continued unchecked across the ice-plains, and, for all its former grandeur and strength, the forsaken city looked appallingly weak in the face of such power.

Arwen awoke with a jerk. No, not from sleeping with Sebring – the snotty elven prince from Lothlorien who'd had his eye on her for however many centuries – but from the sudden movement kind. It seemed that the goblins had some use for her after all. Ever since she had been captured, they had treated her with more respect than any other people unlucky enough to be seized. If more respect meant not being eaten then she was perfectly happy with a state of affairs such as this. However, they had left her stapled to a hot stone table for several days, which had been rather painful. If she got free, they had better watch out.

Goblin voices chattered and, with a lunge, the stone table began to move towards the door. The rocking motion and the occasional curse told her that she was being carried, table and all, somewhere. Whatever their purpose, it could only be an evil one. Goblins didn't act like this for the fun of it.

With a surprising lack of noise, the iron door slid into the wall, and a long journey along endless passages, colonnades and tunnels began. The stifling atmosphere grew even hotter and Arwen realised that they were going deeper underground. They passed through many chambers, some full of goblins who were hacking lumps of a black substance off a rock-face, and others that contained complex machinery which looked like it hadn't seen maintenance for centuries, and which was vomiting a black fluid into vats. Finally the ceiling above her reared up into the shadows. With an effort she raised her head off the stone and looked ahead to see where they were going.

She gasped.

It was an awe-inspiring sight. A cavernous hall of unfathomable height, pillared with a forest of steel columns and paved with marble flagstones, stretched as far as she could see. It must have been a splendid marvel in its heydays, but those were obviously long gone. The pillars were pitted and corroded with rust, the marble flooring blackened and broken in places, and the whole thing was flooded with ten feet of seething waters, the vapours of which wafted lazily every which way and obscured everything in a dank haze.

A causeway had been built from the entrance to the raised dais in the centre of the hall. This kept Arwen and her bearers out of the noisome liquid, which bubbled revoltingly. When the goblins disembarked the rickety causeway onto the secure stone of the dais, she heaved a sigh of relief – being dropped into that hideous ichor anchored to a hundredweight of stone was not an encouraging thought.

Then the goblins thumped her down unceremoniously on top of a crudely hewn block of stone in the very centre of the dais. And she realised that her relief was a little premature.

They had said gift. But they should have said sacrifice.

But to what?

As the companions ran towards the suddenly inviting maw of the city, they realised that their allotment of shocks was not quite over for the day. For the city was clearly not deserted. A chorus of yells could be heard, accompanied by the strident ringing of bells. The great gates that the three had been making for began to grind shut.

"Run!" yelled Aragorn, and they sprinted desperately forwards. Only a few hundred yards to go. People could be now seen on the towering battlements, hurrying to and fro like ants whose nest has been kicked. The gap was closing, a few more seconds and they would have made it! As it was the three companions skidded in the slippery mush on the road and collided with the gates, as they slammed shut with a very final thud. Aragorn hammered on the cold steel with his fist. It had about as much effect as hammering on a troll.

With a roar, a volley of flaming arrows soared over their heads from the city into the onrushing melee of Orcs. The guttural barks and grunts of the Horde clashed with the shouted orders and cries from the battlements above to create a maelstrom of noise. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli ran along the side of the wall, looking for another way in. There was none. Suddenly Legolas gave a cry and pointed at a half-concealed something he had almost tripped over. The others looked on as he scooped the snow away to reveal the frozen form of an Orc lying on the ground. It was not alone. The ground seemed to be carpeted with the prone forms, each frozen in to the ground in the rictus of death.

"Seems like they've taken heavy losses in their first attack," said Gimli. "Well, they're about to take some more!"

They drew their weapons and backed up against the wall. Gimli swung his axe with relish at the first Orc as it ran at him, slavering. The blade swung with deadly accuracy and passed cleanly through the Orc. Then the Orc returned the favour and passed cleanly through Gimli.

"I've got to lay off the beer," muttered the dwarf as he watched the Orcs completely ignore him and his friends, and begin scaling the wall. Aragorn drew Anduril from its sheath and attempted to skewer some of the verminous horde. However, as soon as the blade made contact, the great din of battle, the yells and screams, the flying arrows, and the entire Orc army vanished as completely as if they had never been there – which of course they hadn't.

Leaving three very confused people behind.

"Ghosts." Aragorn said as he sheathed Anduril. It wasn't so much a question as a statement. They retraced their steps to the road and passed between the Gates. It was tempting to think that they had imagined the whole thing, but the two quarter-circles of disturbed snow made that comforting delusion just that ... a delusion. Being caught between two armies of spirits engaged in perpetual war was not an experience calculated to breed confidence, and the three travellers settled down in the ruin of an inn with the unpleasant feeling that they were being watched.

They ate sparingly of their rations. Legolas eyed his strip of dried and salted meat – which had all the palatability of leather - with great distaste, while Gimli ate it with great gusto. The elf couldn't help but wonder whether, if all other food ran out, the dwarf wouldn't eat his own boots with that same expression of enjoyment.

They had passed many more frozen bodies littering the streets of the city, and it was a gruesome spectacle. Now, it seemed, the spirits of the unburied dead were condemned to relive their last battle for eternity. Yet however sad it was, they could not be interred, since the ice which bound them to the earth was as hard as the finest steel. Anyway, the quest had to take precedence, and they discussed it at length before they slept.

Aragorn dreamed as always of Arwen, but before dawn broke, Gimli's last words of the night before stole in. "I don't understand why you're looking for this 'Dome of Fire' above the ground! We Dwarves have always built our most secret places under it. Safer that way ..."

He woke up to the sight of the said Dwarf trying to defrost over the fire a barrel of wine he'd found. Gimli looked up. "I know what you're thinking, and no. I wouldn't usually drink wine, but this stuff was old when Goldilocks over there was young." Legolas snorted at this and carried on combing his hair. "So think of the vintage!" Gimli concluded.

"I thought you had decided to quit drinking?" Aragorn said, with a sardonic smile.

"Well, in a way, yes. But in a more realistic and truthful way, no." He caught Legolas' eye. "Leastways, not yet. Besides, a drop of summat in the morning's good for keeping out the cold," he finished hastily.

After a semblance of a breakfast, the companions set out towards the hub of the great sphere of the city. It was there that they hoped to find the Sword waiting for them.

Little did they know that it would not be alone.