The Lord of the Rings: The Siege of Gondor (Part 12 and Last)

The Tale

‘Ever since the middle of the night the great assault had gone on. The drums roll.’ Company after company crowd the walls on all sides. Mumakil of the Hard pull assault towers and siege engines through the flames. The Witch King, their Captain, doesn’t care or direct what they do; their purpose is only to test the defenses and keep the defenders busy in many places. He is concentrating on the Gate. Strong as it is, made of steel and guarded with towers of stone, still it is the key, the weakest part in the walls of Gondor.

To that end they bring up Grond, a great battering ram a hundred feet in length, with a head forged in black steel in the shape of a voracious wolf, surrounded by great engines, swinging in chains, drawn by great beasts, with mountain trolls to wield it. It has been wound with ‘spells of ruin’. ‘Grond they named it, in memory of the Hammer of the Underworld of old.’

But at the Gate the resisitance is strong, strengthened with the knights of Dol Amroth and the best of the garrison, and the wreck and slaughter of the invading forces choke either side of the Gate. But driven by madness more and more come up. Grond crawls irresistibly forward, unfazed by fire or the ruin of the orc troops caused by its maddened beasts.

The Witch King finally comes riding over the hills of the slain, ‘a horseman, tall hooded, cloaked in black.’ He comes forward, ignoring every arrow or dart. He stops and lifts a long pale sword. A fearful silence falls on defenders and foes alike, and for a moment all is still.  Then Grond reaches the Gate in a sudden rush and is swung, hurled forward by huge hands. The stroke lands, rumbling like thunder through the City. But the Gate holds.

‘Then the Black Captain rose in his stirrups and cried aloud in a dreadful voice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and stone.’

Three times he cries, and three times Grond booms against the Gate. And on the third the Gate of Gondor bursts asunder in a flash of searing lightning and the doors lie in fragments on the ground. And the Lord of the Nazgul rides in through the archway that no enemy had ever passed.

All flee before him except one. There, silent and as immoveable as a statue, is Gandalf, upon Shadowfax, who ‘alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror.’ The wizard alone denies him entrance, sternly bidding him back to the abyss prepared for him, to ‘fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master! Go!’

The Black Rider throws back his hood and reveals that he is wearing a kingly crown. But it is on no visible head; you can see the fires behind him, flickering between his crown and shoulders. From his invisible mouth comes deadly laughter.

‘Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!’ He raises his sword high and flames run down the blade. Gandalf does not flinch.

 ‘And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the City, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.

‘And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns. In dark Mindolluin’s sides they dimly echoed. Great horns of the North wildly blowing. Rohan had come at last.’

NOTES

Wow. Only two pages, but they are so packed. I think even my ‘summation’ might be longer than the original material, and of course nowhere as skillfully managed for dramatic effect. It is a moment that, even years later, could still set Tolkien’s spirit thrilling.  You can feel its power even in the animated Rankin/Bass 1980 The Return of the King, and faint vibes in the Peter Jackson botched version of the scene.

Grond, the Hammer of the Underworld, was later revealed in The Silmarillion to be the personal weapon of Morgoth, the original Dark Lord, with which he most famously fought and slew the Elf-lord Fingolfin.

The ‘spells of ruin’ and ‘forgotten words of power and terror’ add to the supernatural dread of the approach of Grond, whose assault is more than merely a great engine of destruction, forged of steel and swung by mountain trolls. It is there to ‘rend both heart and stone.’

Could Gandalf have defeated the Lord of the Nazgul at this moment? The Nazgul seems to think so. It was not, as it were, in Gandalf’s mission statement to oppose power with power, only to aid the peoples of Middle-earth when their own efforts were not sufficient. The Wraith Lord’s power was greatly enhanced by Sauron’s waxing power; he was no longer the creature that could be balked at Weathertop or the Ford of Bruinen. Gandalf had died fighting the Balrog; could he die again? As it is, he halts the Nazgul long enough for things to be taken care of by more human resources.

The cock crow has long been held to be of supernatural significance. It heralds the dawn, and at its sound all ghosts and the Undead must flee. The Witch-King flees, but it is more the coincidence (?) of the arrival of Rohan than any supernatural power inherent in the rooster. But the cock crow asserts the natural order of things in defiance of the terrors of the shadows.

There has long been a metaphysical argument that evil is nothing, a diminution of the good until it fades away into non-being. The Lord of the Nazgul’s ‘invisible sinews’ and unseen head argue, as C. S. Lewis puts it, that ‘Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man's best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why.’ It is the final abyss that awaits the end of evil, like a sucking black hole that, when entered fully into, cannot be escaped.