Chapter 10: Setting Off; The Spies of Kaientai and That Really Cold Mountain

Kurt fidgeted uncomfortably. They had left Rivendell some five hours back in the opposite direction and already Kurt was wishing he hadn't opened his big mouth and offered to take the Ring himself. They were traveling in single file again, so as to avoid talking to anyone.

Foley was in the lead, walking with the aid of his stick and glancing at a travel map every now and then. Jeff followed him, whistling tunelessly and annoying most everybody, but especially Kane who was right behind the Elf. The massive 'Dwarf' was silent, but his mask was freaking out both and Edge and Christian, and they trailed a couple of feet behind him. Next was the Rock, leading a very overlade pony. What the beast was hauling along Kurt couldn't fathom, as all of them seemed to be carrying a medium-sized pack themselves. Jericho followed the Rock, having grumbled for the first two hours about not being able to bring his horse. Kurt followed Jericho, and the Hobbit had a great view of Jericho's bizarre shield that he seemed to have swiped from a buffet table somewhere and was wearing it on his back, so he looked like a blonde turtle. Behind Kurt was Hunter who had remained silent for the entire trip.

Kurt adjusted his pack and garments for the nth time since they had set off. He thought back to his last meeting with JR. The older Hobbit had given him a really cool looking sword and a coat of what he called mythril. Actually JR had thought them much too good to give to someone like Kurt, but heaven knew they were probably the things that could save Kurt from orcs, goblins, whatnot, or even from himself.

And now the mythril was really bugging him. Sure it was lightweight, but man did it stick to your side like plaster on a hot day.

"Do you have ants up your pants or something?" Hunter asked when Kurt shifted his pack yet again.

"No," Kurt said crossly. "I'm just wearing something really uncomfortable, okay?"

"The woolen briefs your mom picked out for you at some bargain shop?" Jericho wisecracked in front of them, turning around a bit.

"Possibly a pair of much too baggy Pokemon boxers," Rock said from in front of Jericho.

"Frilly pink panties?" Jeff called out his guess. The Elven ears made him hear positively anything.

"Very funny," Kurt grumbled, looking down at his big, hairy feet.

Jericho was about to say something else when a whine from Christian stopped him. "Foley, come on, we're tired, and hungry!"

Foley groaned. "Trust Hobbits," he muttered. He turned around to face Edge and Christian with a stern expression. "Let me get one thing straight, Edge, Christian," he said. "We are not going to stop until nightfall, is that understood?"

Edge and Christian looked sullenly at each other, then back at Foley. They were actually about to agree when a loud rumble sounded. The brothers looked at each other, and then at Foley, who was red. "Dude, you're hungry too, aren't you?" Edge said dryly.

Foley was quiet for a while. "Maybe a little bit," he finally admitted.

"BREAK!" Edge yelled to the rest of the company.

There was some grumbling from Hunter about covering as much ground as they could before night came, but after a unanimous vote of everyone else against him, he consented. In a while Kurt had a fire going and was heating up some food they had received in Rivendell. Foley sat down to have a smoke and once again study the maps he had brought along. The directions written in near-incomprehensible Tengwar were really confusing him. Jericho, for some reason, started sparring with Edge and Christian.

"Is that the best you can do, you runts?" Jericho taunted, swinging his sword and parrying easily against the both of them.

"Damnit, Christian, get behind him then we can take him down!" Edge said.

"It wouldn't do squat!" Christian said. "He's still got that stupid shield on!"

"So poke him in the ass!"

"Don't you dare!" Jericho yelped. At that moment Christian ducked between his legs. Reacting quickly, Jericho fended off Edge and turned around to stop Christian's blow. When he did, he accidentally nicked Christian's hand.

"Yeeeooowwwcchh!" Christian yelped, dropping his sword and then jumping around clutching his hand with the minuscule cut.

"You hit my brother, you bastard!" Edge yelled. He ran up and kicked Jericho in the shin and then speared him headlong. Christian then got up and they proceeded to beat down on the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla as best as they could.

This made Hunter burst out laughing, for possibly the first time anybody had ever seen him do so. "Shut the hell up, assclown, and get these idiots off me!" Jericho yelled at him.

"What, a big warrior like you can't fend off two Hobbits half your size?" Hunter mocked.

"All the better for them to hit below the belt!"

The three of them continued to tussle with no intervention from Hunter as Kane approached Foley. "Call me crazy, but are we going the long way around?" he suddenly asked, his voice muffled by the mask he wore as usual.

"Hey, this is the best way I could make out," Foley said, taking the pipe out of his mouth. "Even if it passes too close to Isengard for my taste."

"Why should we make it more difficult for ourselves?" Kane asked. "We can take a shortcut in the mines of Moria. I have a cousin there, Andre the Giant. He'll give us a king's welcome."

Foley was about to ask why a Dwarf would have the title of Giant, but remembered that he was talking to a Dwarf himself who was nearly seven feet tall. He shook it off. "I wouldn't go through the Mines of Moria if it was the last way on Middle-earth," he said instead.

"Yeah, do you know what kind of scary shit is inside that place?" Jeff remarked with a shudder.

"How would you know; have you been there?" Kane shot back.

"Hell no!" Jeff declared. "And I wouldn't want to go there at all!"

"What are they bitching about again?" the Rock asked Foley, coming up to the wizard to join him for a smoke.

"Oh you know, Elf-Dwarf stuff," Foley said with a shrug. He pointed to a symbol on the map. "Does that look like an 'H' to you?"

"Wussy Elf-boy!" Kane growled at Jeff.

Jeff was about to yell something really cool-sounding in Elvish, knowing Kane probably wouldn't understand it anyway, when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. Ignoring the rest of the group first, he stood up on the Rock, I mean a rock, and peered out in the horizon with his mighty Elf vision. "What the crap is that?"

"What? The Rock doesn't see anything," Rock said, feeling around his person for some pipe weed.

Foley reached over and took off his sunglasses. "Clearer now?"

"Very funny," the Rock said, grabbing it from him. Then he turned back to where Jeff was looking without putting his shades back on first. "What in the blue hell IS that?"

"It looks like a cloud," Edge said. Apparently the scuffle had ended when Christian had accidentally kicked Jericho in the groin with his size 22 wide and had the man from Gondor groaning in pain to one side.

"Then why is it black among a bunch of other white ones and moving against the wind?" Hunter asked, standing up.

"They're crows!" Jeff said. He looked at them. "Crows? Should we feel threatened?"

"Dude, hell yeah!" Edge said. "They're black crows! They're the harbingers of death or something!"

"No, sparrows are," Christian said.

"Black crows count too!" Edge insisted.

"Shut up, all of you, and hide your sorry asses!" Foley yelled out.

At that everybody scampered off in different places to duck underneath bushes and behind rocks. Jericho limped off behind a boulder and happened to share it with Christian. He glared at the blonde Hobbit as Christian gave him a sheepish grin and then gave an exaggerated motion for him to be quiet. Kurt dove under a bush, underestimating its width underneath and promptly rolled down a couple of feet, slamming into the Rock a couple of ways down. Rock was about to yell at him when the flapping of the crows got louder.

The crows flew around for a couple of minutes, not really looking intimidating, so that Jericho began to feel like an idiot hiding from them. After a while of circling above their poor hiding places the birds flew off.

"What was that all about?" Edge asked when they had crawled out of where they had been taking cover.

"Spies of Kaientai," Foley answered.

"Crows?" Hunter asked skeptically.

Foley shrugged. "They probably though that it fit in with their EEEVVIIILL gimmick," he said with a frowned. "But now when they tell those two creeps that we're here, they'll be watching the pass near Isengard. Goddamnit! Now we've been cut off."

"So what now?" Jeff asked.

Foley looked up at a tall, ominous mountain capped with snow that seemed to frown down at them. "Anybody pack snowshoes?"

»»»

"Hah, who looks cooler now?" Jeff asked triumphantly.

Jericho glared at him. "Shut up, Skittles-boy… Elf… whatever!" he yelled over the blizzard.

They were on top of the really tall, cold mountain that was being hit with snowstorms every single day of the year. Today it was particularly vicious and still Foley had adamantly insisted they go through. In other words, all the other eight of the Company felt like strangling the life out of him, if they just weren't just freezing in their flimsy clothing. Okay, so maybe seven out of eight. Jeff, being the damned Elf that he was, had no problem walking over the snowy surface.

Things were actually okay for a while on their climb up. It wasn't snowing heavily for the first part and all they had been walking on was firm snow. So far so good. But then there was a near skirmish that happened concerning Jericho.

Kurt, being the klutz that he was, was trudging along when he slipped. He would have rolled down the entire length of the blasted mountain again if Hunter hadn't been there to stop him with his foot like he was a rolling log. Hunter grabbed him and pulled him to his feet. "Get up. You do that again and I might just let you fall all the way down."

"Gee, thanks a lot," Kurt said sarcastically. Then he grabbed at his neck frantically. "Damnit! The Ring is gone!"

"WHAT?" Foley, Rock, Kane and Jeff demanded from some feet in front of them.

Kurt glanced over to his right and his face lit up. "Whoops, my mistake, there it is. I must've dropped it," He said, spotting the golden Ring on a patch of snow nearby. He was about to go over and pick it up when somebody beat him to it.

Jericho stooped over and picked up the Ring. "We're going through all this shit because of this one little thing?" he mumbled to himself.

"Jericho, give it back to Kurt," Hunter said edgily.

Jericho looked up at him. "Don't give me orders like that, you're not the leader of this expedition! Unfortunately, the weird wizard guy with the pointy hat is."

"Just give it back, Jericho," the weird wizard guy with the pointy hat then called.

Jericho sneered at him, then held up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine, be that way. You guys ought to learn how to relax, y'know?" he said. Then he walked over and handed it to Kurt. "Here you go, squirt," he said.

Kurt made a grab for it, but then Jericho yanked it out of his grasp in the last second.

"Too slow!" Jericho taunted.

"Just give the fucking Ring back to the Hobbit!" Hunter yelled out in exasperation.

"All right, don't get your panties in a bunch, Hunter," Jericho said with mock politeness. He dropped the Ring in Kurt's hand and strolled away whistling like nothing had happened. Edge and Christian gave each other looks. That guy was definitely more than a little weird.

But that was about half an hour ago. Right now they were near the peak of the mountain and the weather had gone from cold to goddamnit-it's-cold plus a gale. And now most of them were half-buried in the snow and making futile attempts at progress.

"Jesus, it's just a little snow," Jeff called condescendingly. "Hurry up!"

"I'd like to see if he'd be as fast as he is now if I shove the Horn of the Walls of Gondor up his ass," Jericho muttered from behind Edge.

"Cooler? I'd pour snow down his pants, let's see how cool he'd feel then." Edge muttered back.

"Wholly shit, where's Kurt?" Christian suddenly exclaimed.

Everybody looked around. Then Triple H turned to the Rock. "You moron, you lost the halfling!"

"You dare call the Rock a moron?" the Rock snapped at him. "Besides, is there really that much of a loss if he's gone?"

"No, but he had the Ring, remember?" Hunter snapped.

"Maybe he sank," Christian suggested, poking at the snow.

"Brilliant deduction, Einstein," Jericho sneered at him. He sighed. "Start digging for the half-wit!"

They began to burrow into the thick, very cold snow and eventually Kane came across Kurt. He was frozen, literally. He was also in a fetal position on his back. Kane lifted him out and dropped him on the snow. "Here he is," He said nonchalantly.

"Shit, he's dead!" Christian exclaimed.

"We could defrost him first before we come to such a rash decision." Jericho said.

"You want to try lighting a fire here?" Jeff said.

Everybody looked around, then rested their eyes on the wizard. Foley was busy looking at a huge colored travel map of Middle-earth that showcased the most exciting spots to watch for Warg attacks when he became aware of them staring at him. Then he slowly shook his head. "I won't do it."

"For crying out loud, Foley, just shine your little magic stick and light a fire for us!" Triple H said.

Edge giggled. "Hehe, he said 'little magic stick.'"

"That was not a sexual innuendo, idiot!" Triple H yelled at him.

Foley shrugged. "All right, fine," he took his staff, lifted it and held it in the air for a while. It turned into a long while. Everyone looked dryly at him. He tapped the end against his palm. "It must be out of batteries."

Everybody groaned. They contemplated what to do a little while longer until Rock gave a sigh of exasperation and produced a lighter. Jeff's eyes bugged out. "Hey, you can't do that; it doesn't fit in with the setting or the rules of canon!"

"Oh, and between the references to movies like Star Wars, the wearing of sunglasses, mentions of implants and batteries, do you really think this is going to matter, jabroni?" Rock snapped.

"Just light the Hobbit," Triple H said wearily.

Rock promptly (and a little too gleefully, Christian thought) flicked the lighter on and held the flame to Kurt's frozen figure. In seconds the color came back to his skin and he jumped, screeching. "What's the big idea?" he yelled out at the others.

"You were frozen, idiot, and we had to get you out of it. That was the big idea," Triple H growled at him.

"That's it, Foley!" Jericho yelled. He stood up on the snow and promptly sank two feet deeper. With a snarl he pulled himself out and faced Foley. "There is no way we're going to be able to wade through the rest of this mess, jerky! I say we go back down the mountain and take another pass! Besides, these are new boots!"

"I agree with him!" Edge said.

"The only other pass is the Mines of Moria, remember? We went through this already!" Foley said.

"It's got to be better than this!" Rock yelled.

"And much warmer too!" Christian followed up.

Jeff shrugged. "I have no problem with this pass."

"Nobody asked you, Elf-boy!" Jericho snapped at him. He turned back to Foley. "I don't know how many chair shots you've taken to the head to get this messed up, Foley, but there's no way we can get through this place, not without one mother of a blowtorch!"

"Now that would be really pushing artistic freedom," Jeff murmured.

"Fine! Then let's let the Ringbearer decide!" Foley said unexpectedly.

"What?" Rock yelled. "What in the blue hell are you thinking letting the dork choose?"

Foley thought about it. "Oh yeah. What was I thinking?"

"Well I vote we go through the mines!" Kurt yelled out, teeth chattering. The cold had more than caught up with him and he was beginning to think getting burned by Rock's lighter wasn't such a bad idea. "Screw the warnings! We're freezing our butts off up here!"

Triple H blinked. "Wow, so he does have a brain."

Jeff groaned. "So we came all the way up here for nothing?" he whined. "You babies, can't you tough it out?"

"That's it! I'm gonna kill the Elf!" Jericho yelled, taking his sword and trying to get out of the white mush to reach the giggling immortal. It took nearly half an hour to stop the man from Gondor and finally proceed back down the mountain. It was official; Caradhras pass sucked. Now they headed for Moria.