The beast ripped mighty Shadowfax into bloody shreds, throwing me painfully into a ditch. Twas fortunate the mare had not crushed me in the fall.

When the beast swooped down to carry my horse away, the Orc took swings at it with a sword. He only got hurled into a tree for his trouble.

King Strider drew his sword, jamming the point in between the creature's plates. The beast roared and struck back, and would have slain him had Skalg not struck the beast from behind with an enormous rock.

Enraged, the creature shrieked and took to the air, not in retreat, but in preparation for its next assault.

Whilst it rose skyward for another go, the ranger king drew his bow and fired upon the creature, but the arrow glanced off with little effect, and his Orc bodyguard could do little better with his thrown ax.

The naked Hobbit vanished, perhaps to some hidden area of the forest.

"Is there any way you can reload the boomstick?" Nob whispered to me. The clever rascal had snuck up on me without the use of magic rings.

"It is in the saddle pack. Which currently resides beneath my mount. If you feel so inclined to lift an entire horse to get it, I will gladly allow you to experiment with this boomstick' to your heart's content."

Nob frowned. "It does us no good now."

"No."

Aragorn remained standing, bow drawn in defiance of the flying beast. "Wizard?"

I did not get up. "Yes?"

He ducked as the beast swooped down to attack him. "Did you happen to find anything useful from the body of the bald priest? Any items which can explode?"

I poked my head out from behind the log, offering a handful of golden arrows. "I cannot say whether this will pierce the creature's armored hide. They did little to aid me when I fired them from my magically enhanced crossbow."

Aragorn fitted a pair of arrows with the golden tips, nocking one back.

A mild success. The arrow struck true to its target, the tough wooden shaft shattering whatever magical vial those arrowheads contain. The resulting tiny explosion merely annoyed the creature, as if a mosquito had bitten it.

Strider fired another, with similarly unimpressive results. "We should run."

I jumped to my feet. "Yes. But I suggest you abandon your steed. I doubt you will manage much haste from it."

The creature swooped again, and Nob's horse proved my words false. Although doing none of us any favors, in its hurry to escape its demise, the mare galloped faster than any horse I had ever beheld.

I and Aragorn quickly dove into the brush on the side of the road, surrounding ourselves with plant cover, putting distance between us and the creature the best we could as we scaled a hill.

Ducking behind a mass of snow covered weeds and sticks, we halted to observe what the beast would do to the carcass of my mount.

As we paused there, my ears detected a soft rumbling sound, like a wagon wheel rolling on blankets.

I looked down. A sled approached at terrific speed, drawn by a team of rabbits, squirrels, and other tiny rodents. "Radagast! What in blazes is he doing here?"

I hurried down the hill to meet him, Strider and the Orc following shortly behind.

My old friend Radagast.

Small, bearded, dressed in rags and skins and a hat with flaps on the sides. His eyes didn't meet, and he didn't bathe, or comb, or otherwise care for his personal appearance. Being a mad wilderness hermit, such things never crossed his mind. Or nose.

The very definition of insanity, but it didn't matter much when giant creatures swooped down and attacked you.

"Hello, my dear friend!" I cried as I approached. "What brings you out here?"

Radagast replied in sounds like his animals. "Fuhfuh fuh fuhuh huh fuh fuh."

I frowned. "Still the avid conversationalist, I see."

The flaps of Radagast's hat raised like rabbit ears. "Fuh fufuh fuh fuhfuhuhufuh." He chewed the sounds through a pair of central incisors like a rabbit.

"Listen, Radagast. You need to quit this area at once! It's not safe!"

Radagast's eyes rolled around in their sockets like marbles. "Bouncika fwow fumahumafoofow."

I shook my head in response. I'd spent far too long with the man, so I could understand much of his incoherent mumblings. "We were just there. What we really need to do is get to Minas Tirith."

Radagast made sounds like a chattering squirrel, pointing to his flimsy wooden chariot.

"No. I really don't think so."

He nodded emphatically, pointing to the sled again.

"You're asking two men, a Hobbit and an Orc to ride this unstable little contraption."

Radagast looked offended, chattering at me like a squirrel. His hat flaps raised again.

Without a word, the Hobbit stepped on.

Sometimes the hermit can speak coherent English, but its a rarity. "See? It's okay!" He gestured for me to board.

I still shook my head no.

Aragorn, the good humored king that he is, suppressed a laugh and stepped behind Nob, the Orc climbing onboard as a matter of duty.

The driver grinned. "Danke."

With an embarrassed groan, I joined them.

The sled proved to be remarkably fast, defying the laws of motion. In seconds, we flew past the creature, tearing across miles of snowy flatland.

"How did you find us?"

Our driver uttered a string of syllables that sounded mostly like noises a ferret would make.

The explosion. Of course. I imagined everyone in the entire realm had heard it. "Twas an accident. Our barbaric companion threw something very dangerous on the fire."

Skalg let out a low indignant growl.

"That isn't to say he is without merit." I glanced back, watching the black beast rising into the air with the remains of Shadowfax in its clutches. As much as I resented her loss, we needed the distraction.

In no time, we plowed through the fields surrounding the center of Aragorn's kingdom, the Pelennor Fields, where the Witch King of Angmar had once been destroyed, and there, in the distance, stood that twisting swirl of white stone, Minas Tirith, Minas Arnor, the White City.

A citadel with curving walls, surrounding a large three hundred foot tall edifice, the tower of Elthelion.

A few moments later we skidded up to the Great Gate, staring at the slanting streets of the lowest level of the citadel through a company of guards and a mithril portcullis.

"I wonder if we shall meet Peregrin here," Nob muttered. "They say he has taken to serving guard."

Aragorn rapped a fist on a metal slat, shouting to the armored guards beyond. "Open up in the name of the king!"

Instead of obeying, the guard turned his back to my friend, barking out names and orders.

A metallic creaking sound.

I looked up just in time to see an armored figure tilting a giant cauldron of boiling oil over the parapet. "Your highness!"