It was still early in the autumn, but up in the High Pass, where the air was thin and cold winds blew incessantly, there was snow all year long. The massive army of orcs and trolls that only three days earlier had set up their camp in the north-western reaches of the High Pass had not yet grown accustomed to the cold and the thin air of the high altitude. A few of the orcs had died, more than half were sneezy and feverish, and almost all struggled to breathe and fought against dizziness.
General Ghâshbúrz sat slumped at his campaign desk, staring at the flask of draught he had drained an hour earlier. He had no energy and the lack of air in his lungs filled him with an overwhelming sense of dread. It was dark inside the command tent, but orc eyes have evolved to see well in relative absence of light, and their keen ears were almost as sharp as a bat’s ears. Ghâshbúrz’s ears had recognized Arnubên’s light footsteps long before the Black Númenorean stepped into the tent.
Arnubên sat down on a crate across Ghâshbúrz’s desk and stared at the slumped figure of the orc general without speaking for a while. His eyes were like almonds, as flat as a cat’s eyes.
”You don’t look well”, Arnûben finally said in a deceptively soft voice. ”Have you been celebrating our great victory in advance? There’s not much longer now before the final march begins.”
”Final march indeed”, Ghâshbúrz grunted. ”I have a headache. Nothing works on it anymore.”
”Are you still doubting the wisdom of Sauron’s grand plan?” Arnûben said. ”I hope not. It is not the task of soldiers to doubt and question – only to follow orders.”
”I will follow my orders”, Ghâshbúrz replied slowly, in a voice of a sleepwalker. ”You know that. If Sauron’s grand strategy calls for sacrificing an army, I won’t question it.”
”So you question the inevitable result of the battle then – our glorious victory?”
”Rivendell cannot be taken by an army of any size”, Ghâsbúrz gravelled. ”Otherwise it would have been destroyed a long time ago.”
”Oh ye of little faith. How arrogant of you to presume that you – a simple orc – would be privy to know all details of the Dark Lord’s grand plan.”
Ghâshbúrz said nothing to that. He was an Uruk, bred for war and to respect the rule of the strong. He would do as he was commanded, but he was not dumb either. He could not deny what he saw so clearly:
Sauron had decided to sacrifice an army of hundreds of thousands of orcs and thousands of trolls in a futile attempt to invade Rivendell in order to accomplish some other objective he could not see or understand. He could only hope that whatever it was Sauron wished to accomplish, it would be worth the sacrifice.
