The Tale
The City is now besieged,
ringed with foes. The sheltering Rammas wall is broken and all the Pelennor
fields abandoned and left to the enemy. Men come running along the northward
road before the Gate is finally shut. They are led by Ingold, who let Gandalf
and Pippin in only five days ago, ‘while the sun still rose and there was hope
in the morning.’
He brings no news of the
Rohirrim; even if they do come, it won’t help, he thinks. The host coming their
way is very strong. Battalions of Orcs of the Eye, and companies of a sort of
men they’ve never seen before. Broad, bearded like dwarves, and wielding great
axes. The northward road (from which Rohan is most likely to come) is held by
these forces. ‘The Rohirrim cannot come.’
The Gate is shut against the
siege. All night the enemy burn field and tree, and kill any man they find,
chopping up even the dead. They can’t tell how many of them have passed over
the river, but come morning, such as it is, the plain is dark with their
marching companies and great camps of black and red tents have sprouted up ‘like
a foul fungus.’
And Sauron’s forces are
digging great trenches, behind which they set up great engines to cast
missiles. There are no such devices on the walls of Minas Tirith strong enough
to throw anything far enough to stop their construction. But the defenders of
the City are not overly concerned. The walls are high, and ‘built ere the power
and craft of Numenor waned in exile, and its outward face was like to the Tower
of Orthanc, hard and dark and smooth.’
But the engines are not
there to break the wall, but to sow confusion and fear among the defenders.
Some volleys are aimed over the wall and burst into flame, bringing peril and
drawing away forces from defending the walls. There is a lesser cast from the
great catapults, but more terrible, bringing great woe. ‘For the enemy was
flinging into the City all the heads of those who had fallen fighting’, faces
contorted in pain when they can be recognized and not merely crushed and
shapeless, but all branded with the Lidless Eye. Some see people they knew when
alive.
The pitiless foe heed not
the Gondor men’s curses, clamoring in ‘harsh voices like beast or
carrion-birds.’ But worse than that are the calls of the flying Nazgul, circling
like vultures, who ride above beyond sight or bowshot, filling all who hear
them with dread and despair, freezing their will. And the effect just gets
worse with every scream; there is no getting used to it.
‘At length even the
stout-hearted would fling themselves to the ground as the hidden menace passed
over them, or they would stand, letting their weapons fall from nerveless hands
while into their minds a blackness came, and they thought no more of war, but
only of hiding and of crawling, and of death.’
Notes
The exact name of this group
of previously unknown men fighting for Sauron is not clear; perhaps they are
the ‘Easterlings with axes’ mentioned later. Their description makes them sound
very Dwarf-like, and there has been some speculation (unfounded from anything Tolkien
wrote) that they were ‘half-dwarves’ or at least taught or influenced by
Dwarves some time in their history. Perhaps it was only ‘parallel evolution’.
I remember describing the ‘head-flinging’
incident to my Uncle Bazzell, trying to match his gruesome details from
Scottish border history.
The efforts of the Witch
King were not the tactics of ‘some brigand or Orc-chieftain’ but calculated
psychological warfare to soften his enemies up and impress upon them the
futility of their position. The effect of the Nazgul cries were more effective
than any swooping down on siege engines or casting soldiers from the walls, as
featured in the Jackson movies.
I’m slowly grinding my way through the chapter, laying siege, as it were, to The Siege of Gondor, hoping to finally conquer it by slow attrition.
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