A/N:  Big, biiig thanks to Cairistiona for her beta work.  This chapter, in particular, needed a lot of tweaks and nudges.

Dakheel—a Haradric name meaning “foreigner.”  It was given to Aragorn in my previous story, “Ransom,” and has followed him south.

You, there, halt in the name of the Eye!  State your name and your business on these roads.  Quickly, I haven’t all day!  Merchants, you say?  And your business here?

Oh, cease your disingenuous bowing and scraping.  Do you think it will do you any good?  Do you not know what this badge of mine means?  I am on urgent business from the Commander General of the Grand Army—yes, from Murtaza himself, who takes his orders directly from the Dark Lord, long may he reign.  So, have done with your prevaricating and take care not to delay me further!

Yes, I can see that you’ve camped for the night.  I have eyes in my skull the same as yourself.  In these empty plains, your cook fires can be seen from a mile off.  What I meant, my good Master Merchant, is what is your business here on the West Imperial Road?  What is your cargo?  Where are you bound?

Umbar?  Of course.  It seems every caravan in these lands is on their way to trade with those ship lords.  You’ve permits to travel and to carry cargo?  Show me.  Very well, this all seems in order.  You carry lumber?  Then, I thank you for your service in helping to rebuild our Lord’s navies.  It will not be forgotten.

There is no need to tremble so, Master Merchant.  These are standard questions.  Appearances must be maintained, after all.  In truth, though, I could care less about whatever petty indiscretion sparks such fear in you.  If you haven’t acquired all the necessary seals from the Under-Vizier of Western Commerce or failed to have your cargo evaluated by the Assistant Inspector of Timber Supply, I really don’t want to hear about it.  I am on a mission of far more import.

And perhaps you can assist me, Master Merchant, in some undoubtedly limited capacity.  Have a look—a good, long look—at this parchment and then tell me:  Have you seen this man?

Look a little longer.  I know, ‘tis only a charcoal sketch, but it was made by one who had prolonged interaction with the brigand.  Note his features—Gondorian, wouldn’t you agree?  His skin is darkened and bronzed from long months under our sun, but the astute can still tell that he is fair of face.

You do not recognize him?  You’re certain?  Take a good look, but know that, accurate though that sketch is, it could not capture his two most distinctive traits.  The first is his height.  This is a giant of a man, a hand’s width taller even than I.  Yes, I see that you begin to understand why it is so crucial that I find this man and protect the hapless people of Harad from his predations.  Also, every man who has come face to face with this one has commented on his eyes.  They are unsettling.  You would remember had you seen them:  gray as storm clouds without a trace of color, but fey and glinting like polished glass.

You’ve not seen him on these roads?  Yes, I’m sure you would remember a man like that.  It seems I am once more wasting my time.  Now, do not be alarmed.  I think, now, that it is unlikely that he ever passed this way.  Still, you should know of the man I track:  the traitor who calls himself Dakheel.

You’ve not heard of him?  By all that’s holy, man, have you been walking about with sand in your ears?  Have you spent all your days among the barbarian nomads?  I thought by now that word of his treachery would have spread from here to the Sea of Rhûn!

No matter, no matter.  I often forget that we cannot expect the common folk to stay abreast of matters of import.  The hour grows late.  I can go no further tonight.  I place this caravan under my protection until daybreak.  Fetch one of your young men to tend my horse and provide it with feed.  Yes, the camels’ grain will suffice if you have naught else.

Well, don’t just stand there!  Do Men not also need to eat?  Have you no sense of basic hospitality?

So, this is your camp.  I admit, from the smoke of your fires I expected something a bit more impressive.  No matter.  Place a watch, at least, to protect these wagons.  There is no knowing what sort of brigands may roam in the dark.

Yes, these rations will do.  I can hardly expect to eat to my usual standards in a place such as this!  You’ve my thanks for the meal, such as it is.  Now, Master Merchant, you must forgive me for saying so, but your company seems woefully unprepared to defend itself in these dangerous times.  You travel with no guards.  You place no watch.  You’ve not even heard of the most infamous outlaw known to travel these lands.  I fear you do not take the threats to your own safety very seriously.  I speak only out of concern, you understand.  The army does what it can, but we cannot be everywhere nor can we spend our strength defending every hapless caravan of ignorant folk.

Nay, do not apologize.  Clearly, it is we who have failed you by failing to properly explain the risk.  That is a mistake I must now strive to remedy.  Gather every man of wits, save those on watch.  Once I explain what I’m about—once you hear the full tale of the man I seek—you will not be so cavalier about your own lives and the Dark Lord’s shipments.

Is this all?  Very well, gather round all that can, and I will tell you of how I met the traitor Dakheel.

Now, General Murtaza in his cunning has established many secret places for the training of young men and the building of our Lord’s armies.  The conscripted, in particular, are often in need of such instruction.  They come to us—boys and young men from all walks of life, often delinquent and directionless.  Their captains and training masters give them discipline, purpose, and a way to, at last, be of use to their nation.  Such places supply an endless need; even peasants such as yourselves must realize the high attrition rates of soldiers in our armies.

I, myself, was stationed at one such place built about a secluded oasis not three months ago.  No, I am no common arms instructor—I leave that to men of more patience and less wit.  Nor was it my task to oversee the fort and its captains—that sort of tedious administration fell to a Vice-General named Khadeem.  Then, as now, I answered only to Commander General Murtaza, who, of course, answers only to the Dark Lord.  I served as their eyes and ears and, at need, as the arbiter of their will.  I might hold that comfortable position still had Dakheel not brought ruin upon us.

He came to us at sunset, riding alone out of the West.

Ah, I see I have your attention.  It sounds like the beginning of a grand tale, does it not?  Like the start of one of the legends or superstitious myths you people still tell?  Well, much as I hate to disabuse you of romantic notions, in truth, it was nothing of the kind.  Rather, Dakheel arrived by a well-worn road, astride a horse bearing the brand of an Umbari garrison.  He was garbed as a humble captain and bore a sealed missive from Murtaza for myself and Vice-General Khadeem.  We read it in Khadeem’s study while Dakheel stood by, not drawing attention to himself while he awaited orders as any mid-ranking officer should.  It was all quite routine.  We gave no thought to the messenger until we reached the last line of the Commander General’s letter and found a post-script.  “I have sent you another captain to aid in your mission.  The man who bears this missive is called Dakheel, and is a skilled tactician and commander of men.  It is my will that he be given reasonable latitude to train a battalion as he sees fit.”  It was clearly written in Murtaza’s hand, which, of course, is quite familiar to me.

Seeing that, we turned our attention, at last, to the man.  I admit, my first thought was not that this was an imposter.  He had Murtaza’s blessing, after all.  When he spoke Haradric his tongue was clumsy, but that is not so strange.  He’d come to us out of Umbar, after all, and the Corsairs speak mostly Westron.  Nor did his Tarkish features condemn him.  There are still many in Umbar who have the pale skin and eerie eyes of our foes.  The Corsairs swear such features mark their lineage to the King’s Men of Númenor, but everyone knows the true Lords of Umbar are long extinct.  If the Umbari today are born with pale eyes, it is likely from intermarriage with their own slaves.

I tell you all this because some will say that Dakheel was uncanny in concealing his own lineage.  Some will even whisper that he changed his features by magic, as the wicked Elf-sorcerers of legend are said to do.  Banish such thoughts from your parochial minds.  He is but a Man; he has no unnatural power save what fools may grant him through superstitious fear.

That first night, Khadeem simply took little notice of him save to direct him to the officers’ housing and order him to report in the morning.  I was a touch more suspicious, but not nearly enough, I am ashamed to say.  “So, you’ve garnered Murtaza’s favor,” I said to him, “Strange that he has not mentioned you to me before now.”

The stranger bowed deeply.  “I am honored that you would think one so lowly as I to be worthy of such a mention,” he replied.  I dismissed him without further inquisition, assured that he knew his place.

How wrong I was.

In the weeks that followed, I kept a close eye on Captain Dakheel.  As the letter had ordered, Khadeem quickly cobbled together a battalion for him to train—though “battalion” seems too grand a word for the four hundred raw recruits in his charge.  I must acknowledge that, as an arms instructor, he was competent enough.  Under his leadership, peasant boys who’d never swung more than a threshing scythe quickly turned into swordsmen.  City-born street urchins who’d never touched a horse that wasn’t skinned and cooked were soon thundering across the desert in orderly cavalry charges.  It was well-known that Dakheel’s battalion trained harder than any other in the encampment.

I could not argue with his results, but I remained troubled by the methods he used.  Or rather, those he didn’t use.

You see, Dakheel eschewed all the traditions put in place specifically to help him maintain order.  How he ever gained his men’s respect is beyond me.  We’d generously provided him with quarters suiting his station, but as soon as his trainees’ camp was established, he abandoned our fine lodgings.  He pitched a ragged tent of his own among the recruits!  He was shamefully familiar with the men and seemed to prefer their company to that of respectable men.  At times, he even took his meals among them.  His idea of discipline, meanwhile, was more like a wet nurse’s coddling.  Nearly every young recruit needs the touch of the lash at one point or another to convince him that training is not a game and respect is not optional.  Yet, Dakheel never used the whip, nor did he allow his sergeants and instructors to do so. If another officer ordered a beating for a man in his battalion—as happens from time to time for off-duty offenses—Dakheel would actually become angry with the offended captain!

There was no reasoning with him on the matter.  Tradition, of course, dictates that a captain—however inept he might prove—is owed the obedience of the men under his command, and therefore may control how they are disciplined.  Dakheel brazenly abused that latitude.  At the time, there were a half dozen other captains at that same site and perhaps three thousand trainees, all told.  The other officers soon learned that it was far easier to overlook minor infractions from Dakheel’s men—it simply wasn’t worth dealing with his haranguing.  They would drag his recruits to the whipping post only for major lapses like failing to bow, but even these punishments were contested.  It seemed to me that Dakheel was an idealistic fool.  Sadly, such men are all too common among inexperienced warriors.  I tried, in good faith, to counsel him.  I warned him that he courted disaster with his blatant disregard for discipline, but he always responded the same way—with a polite smile and a question.  “Do you find the discipline my men display to be substandard?”

And the infuriating thing was, I did not.  As I said, one could not argue with his results.  Though he often roused them before dawn to begin morning drills, his recruits were almost never tardy.  At camp, they rarely instigated conflict with other units, though such brawls are commonplace among trainees.  To a man, they were efficient in their work and dedicated in their training, though many were so green they still smelled of goat dung and more had been declared hopelessly intractable by other commanders.

As you might imagine, his men loved him the way a willful toddler loves a permissive nursemaid.  And, it wasn’t long before he began to pick out his favorites from among them.

This was not so strange; as training progresses, it is commonplace for captains to select their most promising men for further instruction.  When the battalion is deployed, these men form the captain’s personal guard and remain his most trusted subordinates.  That Dakheel played favorites was not unusual, but the men he chose for such honors were.

We called it “the Grand Company of the Unwanted.”  Dakheel filled it with men who, before his coming, had been either hopelessly inept or endlessly belligerent.  These were men who’d been disciplined so many times that their backs were just masses of scar tissue, who’d been labeled so incompetent that they should have been either relegated to manual labor far behind the front lines or grouped in a company of the equally hopeless and sent on some suicide charge.  Since Dakheel’s battalion had been thrown together so suddenly, he began with more than the usual number of misfits.  Yet, he did not simply accept these, he actively sought out more.  If he happened to notice a particular man from another battalion who was repeatedly brought to discipline, he would approach that man’s captain and seek to bring him into his own battalion—often in trade for one of his less troublesome recruits.  I believe this practice actually endeared him to his fellow captains somewhat, since it saved them the trouble of whipping their own delinquents into shape.  Even a stray pig can serve a purpose, after all, if it swallows the trash that would otherwise clutter our streets.

A month passed in this manner, with Dakheel forever pushing the boundaries of acceptable decorum while somehow maintaining enough good will that he was allowed the latitude—often, over my objections.  I found it all incredibly tiresome.  When, at last, Khadeem declared the ragtag battalion fit for combat, I thought I had the perfect first mission for them.  Alas, I now see my folly!  His command had so disrupted the natural order, that I should have been far more suspicious.  He and his men should have been sent north at once and thrown against the armies of Gondor to prove their loyalty or die in the attempt.  But, I was still operating in good faith, despite all the vexations Dakheel had caused me.  l saw him only as a fool, and not as a traitor.  I sought to burn that idealism out of him, expecting he would one day thank me for it.

There was a village two days’ march to the east that could not have been more inconsequential had it tried.  It was built in the heart of the desert, fed by a handful of runoff farms, and watered by a few shallow wells.  It had been an outpost for trading caravans once, but as the wells dried up, the trading routes did as well.  The village had reached a point where it produced nothing but children, which it then could not feed.  The worthless peasants born there fled one by one to seek better fortunes in the city.

The village might have escaped our notice entirely, had one of those refugees not brought it to our attention.  A young man native to that barren stretch of wilderness had recently been arrested in Umbar for killing a vizier.  The youth died under torment before his interrogators could determine whether the murder of one of the Dark Lord’s instruments was the foolish mistake of a drunkard or an act of treason.  To be safe, Murtaza had commanded that the penalty for treason would fall on the guilty man’s home village.

That particular stretch of desert was too unimportant to warrant much of an armed presence.  Aside from a handful of villages—all equally dirt-poor—and the rare nomadic tribe, it was uninhabited.  The nomads were a source of concern, as they are too ignorant to bow to the Dark Lord or any other, but their occasional predations on the peasants caused little harm.  Our training encampment was the closest the region had to a military presence, so it was fortunate that when Murtaza’s order came, we had a newly commissioned battalion perfectly suited to the task of razing the traitor’s village.

I stood by Khadeem’s side as he summoned Captain Dakheel and laid out his orders.  The Vice-General explained in detail how the village was to be destroyed—how every thatched hut was to be burned along with the surrounding farms, the fields sown with salt, the chickens slaughtered and thrown down the wells.  He spent time, in particular, specifying that every villager was to be killed, from the able-bodied men right down to the babes in arms.  Too many captains, in the past, have claimed to have misunderstood such orders.  Too often an officer whose heart is not true will use such “misunderstanding” as a shield to enact a lighter sentence—by allowing some of the women to escape, for instance, or by taking the children in thrall rather than slaying them.  We gave Dakheel no such avenue.

He stood before us, motionless at parade rest, and listened silently.  His face remained expressionless throughout.  Only when Khadeem asked the standard query—“Have you any questions?”—did he speak.

“What have they done,” he asked, “The villagers?”

Khadeem and I exchanged a look.  That particular question ran dangerously close to questioning Murtaza’s will—and therefore the Dark Lord’s will.  Perhaps Dakheel saw our doubts, because he continued, his voice utterly neutral.  “It affects my tactical plan, you see.  A village in open revolt may expect an attack and provide undue resistance.  I would not see the men I’ve trained lost so soon if it can be avoided.”

We considered that.  It was a reasonable enough concern, given his tendency to coddle his recruits.  “You can expect little resistance,” Khadeem said at last.  He explained about the vizier’s murder and the charge of treason.  Isolated as that village was, they likely had not even heard of the misdeeds of one of their sons.

When the Vice-General had finished his tale, the captain nodded, still without so much as a trace of emotion marring his face.  “My men stand ready, but they have not yet been trained on assaulting structures.  I request a week’s time to drill them on the proper tactics before we set out.”

I raised an eyebrow sharply.  “A week for a simple mission to wipe out a few dust rats?”

“It will not be their only such encounter, and not all will be so simple,” he replied, “I would not have them learn bad habits if it can be avoided.”

“Yet, every day you tarry, you risk the village learning of their doom and taking precautions.”

“Then let them!” he cried.  “Is the dread of death not part of the sentence laid on them?  Their precautions will avail them little, in the end.”  A fey gleam had entered his eyes.  For the first time, he seemed dangerous to me.  I thought that perhaps we would yet make a captain out of Dakheel the Nursemaid.

As his answers were not openly treasonous, I deferred to Khadeem.  He was frowning.  “You have three days,” he said at last.

Dakheel bowed.  “Thank you, General.  My lord.”

That night, Dakheel saddled his horse and rode out alone into the desert.  I should have stopped him, but the man I’d set to watch the stables did not have the wits to have him followed.  My spy did not even think it worth a mention until he gave his daily report the next morning.  By then, Dakheel was already back, having returned with the dawn.

I rode out to confront him in the barren place where he’d chosen to drill his soldiers.  In an empty stretch of plains where the ground was firm, he’d fashioned a “town” for them to level out of ropes and tent pegs.  His men sat ahorse in neat rows.  At some unseen command, orderly squads would gallop in to cast their flaming brands into the marked-off squares that represented houses.  Just as quickly, they would fall back and cavalry archers would rain arrows on the empty “streets.”

I could easily see how his plan would be applied—how the first wave would set fire to the structures, driving the panicked villagers out into the open, where they would be easy prey for our archers. 

I forced myself not to admire the simple elegance of those tactics. 

As I rode up beside Dakheel, he acknowledged me with a half-bow—the best he could manage while mounted.  In low tones—for I would not undermine even the most foolhardy commander in the presence of his men—I demanded an explanation for his nighttime disappearance.  He calmly explained that it was an old custom of his to seek solitude before a battle, to plan and to pray.

I pursed my lips.  “So you give honor to the Great Eye.”

He smiled mildly.  “All the honor He deserves,” he assured me.

Well, I had nothing to say to that.

His battalion set out at dawn two days later—four hundred horsemen armed with spear and bow and torch.  It had taken me weeks of maneuvering to position one of my spies in Dakheel’s command, so I was less than pleased when that particular man limped back to camp not three hours later, leading a horse that had thrown a shoe.  I fear I spent too much time berating the failed spy and too little time considering the turn of events.  I see, now, that it was too great a coincidence.  I should have known then that something was amiss.

But, before evening fell that night, the watchman on our easterly wall spotted a column of smoke in the distance, just where the treasonous village ought to have been.  I could sleep easy, then, confident that the traitors’ execution had gone off without a hitch.  There is no harm in taking satisfaction in a job well done.

Then morning came, and Dakheel’s battalion did not return.  We thought nothing of it, at first.  They would have had to ride hard to reach the village as quickly as they apparently did.  It was only natural that they should give their horses a rest on the return journey.  And perhaps dealing with the traitors had taken longer than expected.  Perhaps a few had held out in some fortified place.  Perhaps when it was done, they’d taken the time to bury the bodies, since we’d not forbidden them from doing so.  Dakheel, I thought, was soft.  It was no strain to think he might be sentimental as well.

But, three days passed, and still they did not return.

Loath though I was to involve myself in the humble matter of a village’s destruction, I knew I could not let this pass.  I rode out with one of the other nearly-trained battalions.

We reached the village.

At first, all seemed as it should be.  The peasants’ hovels had been reduced to burnt-out shells.  Such structures are built out of adobe in even the poorest places, but the thatched roofs had been burned away, the shutters and doors smashed off their hinges, all the fabric and flammable furniture piled and burned.  Ash still drifted on the air. 

For a few moments, we were all impressed with Dakheel’s efficiency.  I even began to wonder if some great calamity had befallen him on his return journey.  For a moment, I actually worried for the traitor.

Then, we noticed that there were no bodies—not in the streets and not in the houses.  Blackened bones should have remained, even if the peasants had burned to death in their beds.  We could find no disturbed earth where Dakheel’s men might have buried their victims and no scorched pyre where they might have burned them.  They’d not thrown them down the wells—in fact, they’d not poisoned the wells at all, nor had they salted the fields.  The villagers, it appeared, had simply vanished.

The dead, as a rule, are not difficult to find.  It is far easier for men and women to vanish while they are still alive.

We combed the village for hours, but could find no explanation save the most horrifying one.

Dakheel and his entire battalion had abandoned honor and embraced treason.  They had warned the villagers of their coming sentence, spirited them away, and set fire to the humble dwellings to throw off pursuit.

Four hundred traitors rebelled as one in a single day.  Such a thing was unheard of.  I rode back to camp in a cold fury and snapped at Khadeem to ready the other battalions for pursuit.  Letting him handle the niceties of supply and logistics, I stormed into our archives, determined to find the names and home villages of every traitor under Dakheel’s command.

I found only cinders.  At some point while we debated whether to pursue, someone had crept into the very archives, gathered all the records of the Seventh Battalion, and burned them right there on the flagstones. 

A rebel captain who could operate with impunity within our ranks.  Four hundred traitors fanatically loyal to him.  And now, we had no record of who any of them were.

Oughtn’t I to know who they were?  Pah!  Tell me, Master Merchant, when was the last time you tried to keep track of three thousand flea-bitten peasant boys?  You think you could recall names and home villages for each one?  I thought not.  As for me, I dealt little with the riff-raff; my concern was with Khadeem’s loyalty and that of the other officers.  I suppose if we’d gathered all the remaining captains together, then by careful recollection they might have been able to recall the names of perhaps a dozen of the traitors.  More likely, though, we’d have wasted hours debating and had little to show for it.  I can hear it now:  “What about that fellow from the Second Battalion . . .Tamir, wasn’t it?  Wasn’t he from that village to the south?”  “No, it was Tahir, not Tamir, and he came from the west.”  “You’re both wrong, his name was Tahmid and he was from the city . . .”  And on and on.  Truth be told, few captains remember the names and personal details of the common soldiers.

Officers who take too much interest in the riff-raff have been known to end up like Dakheel.

So, I was thwarted—temporarily, it seemed.  I pushed my rage aside.  We would simply have to capture them, that was all.  The traitors would reveal their names and home villages and gods-knew what else during their interrogations.

Khadeem had nearly three thousand recruits ready to march within the hour.  Every man was applied to the task of finding the traitors, from those about to be deployed to those who’d arrived not three days before.  Khadeem knew, as surely as I did, that when word of this treachery broke, our very survival would depend on how quickly we quashed this rebellion.

We marched on the burned-out village in a grand legion.  By then, the place had been abandoned for nearly a week, but four hundred men and horses will inevitably leave signs of their passage.  Soon, our trackers picked up signs of a large company on foot, moving northeast.  The horses, it seemed, had scattered in all directions.  We took no further note of them, but followed the trail of the marching men as it wound steadily up into a series of hills.  It was clear and easy to follow—almost too clear.  I wonder now if they intentionally drew pursuit after them, though to what end I cannot say.

We marched for a full day and night.  I expected a weeks-long pursuit, given that the traitor’s battalion had had three days already to lengthen their lead, yet somehow weovertook them at dawn on the second day.  The trail ended at a natural fastness—a rock formation that rose up sharply from the surrounding hills.  Only a single trail rose up into those rocks.  Not a soul was visible, but high up on the sheltered heights, we could see the faint smoke of campfires.

Khadeem halted the ranks.  Without a word, he signaled for the archers to string their bows and make ready.  We would greet the traitors with a hail of arrows sent right over their makeshift fortress.

The General dropped his hand and a thousand arrows flew.  If you have never seen such a thing, know it is a beautiful sight, when all the armies of our Lord act in unison, falling with the weight of one mighty fist.

Alas, that it was in vain.

We expected our assault to be met with cries of alarm and the screams of the dying, but when the bows stilled, only silence reigned for a moment.  Then came the stuttering twang of hundreds of opposing archers shooting out of a dozen high places.  Arrows swarmed out at us like hornets, striking armor and flesh.  Within moments, dozens of men were falling and screaming.  The traitors loosed one more volley and then went still once more.  Up on the heights, we could see a line of spearmen holding the trail, awaiting our assault.

Khadeem decided to oblige them.  Swiftly, he detailed a battalion of our strongest and most experienced fighters to charge the hill.  Arrows rained down on them.  Boulders, too, fell upon the trail, cracking skulls and felling men.  They pressed on, but Dakheel had chosen his refuge well.  In the narrow confines of the trail, our greater numbers meant little, and our foes held the high ground.  Time after time, the attackers were thrown back, and time after time, they advanced again.  Our casualties climbed from the dozens to the hundreds, and still our progress was scant.  We managed to slay a few of them, of course, but only at great cost.  Our arrows could not reach up the winding pathways to strike the few men we could see.  In each wave, a few of their spearmen and swordsmen were dragged down, but they still fought as fiercely as trapped animals.  None were captured alive.

And before we could reach the bulk of their forces, we had to deal with him.  Dakheel stood planted at the front lines.  He had abandoned the curved scimitar he’d worn about camp.  In its place, he held a long, straight sword like the Gondorians bear.  As our men were driven back in wave after wave, they babbled in fear of him.  Over and over, I heard how that long sword in his long arm gave him a reach nigh equal to that of a spearman, how his reflexes were sharper than any duelist, how his eyes gleamed like some demon of lore.  They were terrified of him.

What frightened me was the look I began to glimpse in some of my men’s eyes.  It wasn’t simply that they were afraid.  No, it is child’s play to command frightened men; you need only make certain they are more afraid of you than they are of the enemy.  Nor could I put down their poor performance to inexperience; any peasant boy with a day’s training can be driven into battle if his commander knows how to handle him.  But, no, these men were troubled.  I came to realize that they did not see Dakheel’s men for what they were—traitors, leeches, apostates against Sauron.  No, these men still saw our foes as comrades.  They were loath to slay them and more loath, it seemed, to capture them alive as they had been ordered.  I began to suspect that the men on the front lines were giving the mercy stroke to fallen enemies rather than dragging them back to face a traitor’s death as is fitting.

Evening fell, and we had made little progress.  The only thing that gave me hope was that the bows of our enemy had fallen silent long before; they must have run out of arrows, and we had not fired on them, so as not to give them more.  I was astounded at the simple waste of the endeavor.  Counting Dakheel’s mad battalion, nearly a third of our garrison was lost.  A thousand men—the product of many thousands of hours of training—would never march under the Great Eye’s banner and bring glory to their land.  As a lull fell in the battle, I took it upon myself to do what I could to salvage what remained.

Khadeem called back the final wave and allowed the men to regroup.  I fixed a white rag to the end of a spear and proceeded up the trail alone.

Yes, of course it was dangerous!  Everyone knows that traitors have no honor.  But, a flag of parley is still respected among all but the most craven.  I stand before you now, do I not?  So, obviously, they did not slay me on sight.

When I was halfway up the slope, I stopped and drove the point of the spear into the rocky ground.

“Dakheel!” I called out, “Do you yet live?  Have you the honor to come out and treat with me?”

And he appeared.  I’ve warned you against a superstitious fear of the man because it is so easy to fall prey to.  Even now, I know not how he approached.  I merely know that one minute I faced an empty slope littered with boulders and bodies and the next he was there, not ten paces from me, as if he’d simply sprung up out of the stones.  He bore that Gondorian sword at his belt as if he’d been born with it there.  Up until that moment, I had truly not thought him a Tark, but, seeing that, it became impossible to deny.  And he seemed larger, somehow, than he had in the civilized confines of Khadeem’s study.  He had always been tall, of course, but I had long ascribed a stork-like gangliness to those long limbs, such as a youth might have before he truly grows into his arms and legs.  Now, though, there was nothing young or awkward in his bearing, and he seemed to exude power.  I scarcely recognized him.

Then I glanced at his shoulder and realized that while he still wore the scarlet tunic of a captain, he had torn off the proud badge of the Great Eye.  Anger drove out my growing sense of awe.

But, I buried my rage at his insolence.  I presented a genial face.  “We grow weary of slaying our own,” I told him, “Can we not put an end to this?  Will you not surrender?”

His eyes were hard.  “You do not seem to be in a position to make such demands,” he said.

“You cannot hope to escape,” I pointed out, “You are trapped and surrounded, and we have more than five times your numbers.”

He arched an eyebrow as if to say Do you, still?  To his credit, though, he did not dishonor the fallen by making such a quip aloud.  Instead, he replied, “My men know well the fates of those you accuse of treason.  You will not find them easy to subdue, and we may cost you more than you thought to pay.”

“Treason,” I murmured, “It’s a strange thing.  You, perhaps, are the last I would have expected it of.  Whence comes this madness, Dakheel?  Have you family in that village?”

He shook his head.  “I simply would not see the innocent die for acts they had no part in.”

One of the corpses nearest me wore a tunic that was torn at the shoulder just as Dakheel’s was.  I turned it over with a toe and one of Dakheel’s men stared up at us with sightless eyes.  “So, you would see your own men die in their stead.”

His eyes flickered—troubled, nursemaid to the very end.  I saw, at last, the chink in his armor.

I gentled my voice to press my advantage.  “This need go no further, Dakheel.  Order them to lay down arms.  Yes, you are a traitor—it is too late for you—but they were only following your misguided orders.  Some may yet be spared for lives as chattel.  At the least, if they surrender now we can make their deaths quick.”

I was ready to do it, too.  As much as I longed to see every filthy traitor torn apart on the racks as their home villages went up in smoke, I would have abided by the terms I offered Dakheel.  I’d have given every one of them the mercy stroke right there if it would have put Captain Dakheel in chains, for I knew that only by his capture could I secure my own future.  But it was not to be.

His eyes flashed and his voice grew hard.  “Go back to your thralls, slave of Sauron,” he spat, “We may not have the arms to defeat you, but neither must we submit to you.”

Had I brought a blade, I would have killed him for that, parley or no parley.  As it was, though, I could only meet his glare with one of my own.  “Then go back to your hole to hide and to pray,” I hissed, “For on the morn, all of your men will die the most painful deaths we can devise.”

And I returned to camp.

Our men were awake and afoot by the first light of dawn, but we were fewer than the day before.  Not only had we taken honorable losses in battle, but a few cowards had fled in the night, wanting nothing more to do with our just mission.  But, enough remained.  They assembled at the base of the slope with weapons in hand.  At a signal from Khadeem, they pressed forward with a roar, charging up the slope.

No cries rang out on the heights.  No arrows flew at our faces. 

No boulders dropped in our path.

No swordsmen sprang out to meet us.

The men reached the summit and, to a man, they halted.  It was almost comical.  They had reached the traitors’ camp, but there was no sign of Dakheel or his men.  Only burnt out cook fires and broken arrows remained.

It took hours to sort out what had happened.  One common soldier earned himself the only commendation of the engagement when he thrust aside a heavy boulder and revealed a crevice reaching down into the rock.  A few scouts followed it down and reported that it opened onto a labyrinth of natural tunnels and cave systems.  We explored the underground warren for as long as our torches lasted, but found countless openings to the surface where the traitors might have slipped away like rats.

One mystery remained:  someone must have stayed aboveground to thrust that boulder over the opening, but we found no living man, and none of the corpses that lay about seemed to have died of self-inflicted wounds.  This last man, whoever he was, might as well have evaporated or sprouted wings and flown away.

At final tally, we lost nearly half our strength to wounds or to desertion.  A handful of those that fled in the night were captured, but none of Dakheel’s men were ever seen again.  The villagers, for whom this whole mess began, were likewise lost.  While we were occupied with facing down Dakheel’s battalion, they slipped far beyond our reach.  Some have speculated that they slipped into distant cities and took new identities.  Others suspect that a band of nomads took them in.  There is some support for the latter theory; for some time afterwards, we had trouble with a nomadic tribe that before had been small and poor but suddenly grew and was supported by many strong horses.

When we, at last, thought to search Dakheel’s abandoned tent, we found confirmation of how fully we’d been deceived.  Lying right there on his pillow, as if it was waiting for us, was a false seal bearing the Commander General’s insignia, along with sheaths of documents that a clever man could use to forge Murtaza’s handwriting.

Only then did it occur to us that we’d never actually seen Dakheel take his vows to Sauron and to the Grand Army; we’d simply assumed that he spoke them back in Umbar in Murtaza’s presence.

Do you not see?  That letter that he bore to us all those weeks ago—the one that labeled him favored of Commander General Murtaza and commanded us to provide him with recruits to mold—it was all a lie.

Our traitor had been an imposter all along.

Khadeem was executed, of course.  Not only did he overlook Dakheel’s insolence for so long, but when he seemingly had him cornered, his command proved inept enough that nine of every ten traitors escaped.  I expected the same fate, but the Dark Lord, in his wisdom, chose to spare me for a little while.  Yet, a death under torment may yet be mine if I cannot soon find this brigand, Dakheel, and bring him to justice.

And as for Dakheel, who can say?  All I can promise is that you will not see him among civilized folk any time soon.  There are few options available to traitors.  I expected that by now I’d have heard of him taking up highway robbery or some equally distasteful lifestyle.  It bodes ill that I have not; if I cannot soon bring him to his just rewards, I suspect I will go to the rack in his stead.

You see, now, why you must post a watch and forever be wary in these open lands?  Who knows what sort of demons might be hiding in the dark?  If even the Grand Army is not safe from the predations of a man such as this, what hope is there for simple people like yourselves?

Yes, it is fortunate for you that men like me exist.  Merciless, some might call me, but mercy is merely aid to vile treachery.

So, sleep sound, tonight, my simple friends.

I will keep you safe.

TBC

A/N:  I hope you enjoyed!  Reviews make my day (and sometimes my week) and concrit is always appreciated.  The third and final installment of this tale will be posted by early next week at the latest after I finalize a few edits.