[mark12_30]

They found the horse pens quickly, but there was a problem; the guard was fully alert, and meandering around among the horses. There was no way to steal a horse without him noticing. Tuka and Gamba looked at each other, puzzled, and then with a shrug, Gamba straightened his back and marched up to the guard on duty and brazenly announced to the guard that he had directions to take the white-faced horse and go to the temple. Tuka followed him hesitantly.

The guard looked at the two of them and gave a bitingly ironic laugh. Four hobbit sacrifices today, not two, he guessed, and waved them on. The horse was old, and steady, and gentle. The Guard got some amusement out of watching them clamber bareback and bridle-less aboard the large horse by chinning themselves on his mane and sliding to his back. Then the horse swung onto the path, and broke into a steady canter with Gamba hanging grimly onto the mane and Tuka behind him. The guard, shaking his head at the hobbits' stupidity, closed the gate after them.

The horse cantered steadily, but slowly, halfway to the temple, and then broke into a trot; feeling the hobbits bounce uncontrollably on his back, he sensibly slowed to a walk. They succeeded in getting him back to a canter twice, but after that he walked again. They were close enough. They slid off, and the horse wandered away, and they turned toward the huge, circular temple. It stood five hundred feet tall, and they would have been amazed at it. But they heard a scream, and then another, and they did not stop to look at the temple, but ran towards it.

They slipped inside the door, ran through the fifty foot tunnel and into the temple, stepping quickly to one side of the door. They were unmolested and unnoticed, for all eyes were on the four bound and screaming sacrifices. No one paid the doorway any attention. The other hobbit, Banin, was one of the stout blacksmiths, and a favorite with Tuka's younger siblings; Banin and Esta were already bloody. Gamba's mind was replaying the words of the guard over and over again: Better to get there when she's dead than anytime after the torture has begun.

They could see that the torture had started with a cruel, slowly fatal stroke. They would slowly die even if nothing more happened to them. Gamba and Tuka were already too late.

But the tormentors did not leave the victims alone, and their suffering was protracted and horrible. Gamba and Tuka would long be haunted in dreams and in waking by the blood and the screaming and the unimaginable cruelty. They waited for the hobbits to die, refusing to leave, honoring them and wishing that they could somehow comfort them by their presence. When Esta finally died, and then Banin shortly afterwards, they did not move at first, but then Tuka came to his senses, and pulled Gamba after him, stumbling unnoticed and unmolested back through the tunnel and outside. Apparently, no guards were deemed necessary during these ceremonies.

The sky in the east was starting to grow less black. They crawled, numb, into a hiding place and sat, sometimes staring, sometimes weeping, for half an hour. And then they got up, and began walking back towards the prison. Out of the gloom, the faithful old horse snorted, and walked towards them, and nuzzled them. They pushed and pulled it towards a rock, and clambered on, and the horse walked slowly back to the pen by the prison. The boys' minds were still filled with, and overwhelmed by, the horrors they had seen, and forgot that the horse was supposed to be turned loose instead of returned to the pen. Before they realized it, the horse had arrived at the pen, and stopped.

There was a different guard at the pen when they arrived. The guard stared as they slid off, and he put the horse into the pen. The boys went back into the cave. And the guard watched them go, and took careful note of whose horse they had ridden.

(OOC: it is now morning of 22 Cermie before Dawn.)