Brothers In Arms: A Middle Earth Story

Chapter 1: The Road to Perdition

The road was already heavily trodden and deeply rutted by the time I made it outside the city. A light rain fell that filled the ruts with dirty, rank water that had likely already been there for some time. Wagons full of wounded troops were accompanied by columns of those able to walk, their hobbling march like that of dead men. All of them had the same haunted look in their eyes; a look that, though eerily vacant, was filled with an unspeakable terror of the horrors they had seen. Most of the soldiers were missing armor or weapons, and many of them wore blood-soaked bandages that were dirty and drew large black flies that buzzed lazily about them. The officers would occasionally look up at my passing, but they too had been scarred by war and almost immediately looked back at the ground when I met their gaze.

A sickly smell rose to my senses, too. Rotting, infected flesh, sweat, and the coppery odor of blood mixed with medicinal herbs in a combination that churned my stomach and forced me to cover my nose with a scarf.

I had been in enough battles to know that they were anything but glorious. The screams of the dying, the blood, the severed limbs lying to rot in the mud while their owners passed away into shadow... These in themselves were enough to make lesser men flee. But this was different. There was an overall feeling of hopelessness that pervaded the air that I had never before sensed after a battle.

"The road to Ithilien," I asked an officer who seemed more coherent than the others as I reined in my steed. "Is it safe?"

The officer, an older man sporting a short-cropped grey beard, shrugged as he helped one of his soldiers sit down against the low stone wall that ran along the road. "Can't rightly say, sir. They've been hitting Osgiliath hard though, you'll have to cross elsewhere. By now Cair Sirion may be under attack as well."

I gave a measured nod as I surveyed the road ahead. "Are the defenses still holding?"

The officer put pressure on the other soldier's wound with a blood-covered hand. "For now. We'll need reinforcements if we're to last though. We've been taking heavy casualties, as I'm sure you've noticed. Soon we won't have enough men to fill all of the gaps."

"That's where I'm headed," I replied reassuringly. "My orders are to pull the Rangers back to provide support."

"You better make for Ithilien then as if the Dark One himself is behind you," he grimaced as the younger soldier let out a cry of pain. "We won't last much longer."

As I rode away, I could tell that he meant more by those last words than just the army at Osgiliath.

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The rest of the road was much the same, though in some places I noticed that the bodies of those who had been too weak to make the journey back had been left behind in the muck, some of them still moaning in pain as they crawled forward while others lie motionless with glassy eyes cast skyward. A thin veil of fog descended upon the road, and eventually I lost all sight of the men who most likely would never be seen among the living again.

I let out a shiver of revulsion as I pulled my cloak closer about me. I wanted to help the injured, but if I were to save those still standing in Osgiliath I couldn't afford to stop.

I took a small, little-known footbridge across the river just to the south of Osgiliath, careful to make sure I hadn't been seen crossing. Though it was far too narrow and too fragile for a contingent of soldiers to cross, the enemy was almost certainly watching it.

I slowed to a halt as I noticed a body hanging from a nearby tree. He wore the armor of a Gondorian soldier, but the Tree upon his breastplate was crudely scratched out and a sign hung from his neck that read "deserter". A feeling of nausea washed over me as I studied the expression of agony that would perpetually mar his young features. He was little more than a boy, perhaps 18 or 19. Killing deserters was almost unheard of, so desertion was most likely happening at an alarming rate for them to execute this unfortunate man. I surmised that they hung him here to deter others from attempting to flee across the bridge, though the fate that awaited them in the hands of the Enemy would have been far worse than hanging. He must have truly felt as if he had no choice if he had attempted to escape Gondor.