‘But lo! Suddenly in the
midst of the glory of the king his golden shield was dimmed. The new morning
was blotted from the sky. Dark fell about him. Horses reared and screamed. Men
cast from the saddle lay grovelling on the ground.’
Theoden tries to rally his
men, telling them to fear no darkness, but his horse Snowmane rears up high
fighting the air, then falls screaming, an arrow in his side. Theoden falls
beneath him.
The dark shadow descends. It
is a winged creature, bigger than any bird, with naked skin and webbed wings.
‘A creature of an older world maybe it was’, that Sauron took, feeding it with
‘fell meats’ and giving it to his servant to ride. It lands and fastens on
Snowmane with its claws.
The Lord of the Nazgul rides
upon it, clothed in black with a crown of steel, with nothing between but a
‘deadly gleam of eyes.’ He wields a great black mace. He has returned to the
air and come before the darkness can fail, ‘turning hope to despair, and
victory to death.’
Theoden’s knights are either
slain or their horses, mad with fear, have taken them away. But Dernhelm and
Merry are still there by the King; their horse Windfola had thrown them in his
terror over the Nazgul descending upon them. But Dernhelm stands, ‘faithful
beyond fear,’ and will not be driven away. But the knight weeps, having loved
Theoden like a father. Merry crawls along like a dazed beast, blind and sick
with horror. He cannot even open his eyes, though his heart reminds him that
he, too, swore that Theoden would be like a father to him.
Out of the darkness Merry
hears Dernhelm speaking, in a strangely changed voice.
‘Begone, foul dwimmerlaik,
lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!’
‘A cold voice answered:
‘Come not between the Nazgul and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy
turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness,
where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the
Lidless Eye.’
Dernhelm is not intimidated;
the ringing of a sword as the weapon is drawn, and the warrior declares ‘I will
hinder [you], if I may.’ The Nazgul calls him a fool: ‘No living man may hinder
me!’
Dernhelm laughs, and with a
clear voice proclaims, ‘But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Eowyn am
I, Eomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you
be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch
him.’
The fell beast screams and
the Nazgul pauses as if in doubt, and Merry opens his eyes in astonishment. A
few paces before him is the winged beast with the Lord of the Nazgul looming
like a shadow above it. Eowyn stands revealed standing in defiance a little to
his left, her helm off and her hair flowing like pale gold. Merry’s mind
flashes on the look on ‘Derhelm’s’ face as they rode from Dunharrow: the face
of one with no hope, seeking death. ‘The slow-kindled courage of his race
awoke.’ He is gripped with the determination she shall not die alone. He must
try to help her. He tries to slowly crawl towards the Witch-King, hoping the
wraith will not turn his deadly gaze upon him. But the wraith is intent on
Eowyn and heeds the hobbit ‘no more than a worm in the mud.’
The fell beast screams and
beats its wings, stirring up a foul air. It leaps toward Eowyn, striking with
beak and claw. Eowyn does not blench. With one swift stroke she cuts off the
thing’s head and it falls with beating wings into a wreck. With its collapse
the darkness passes and the light of the sunrise shines about Eowyn.
But the Black Rider rises up
from the ruin of his steed, and towers threatening over the maiden. With a
venomous cry of hatred he brings his mace down and shatters Eowyn’s shield. The
shield falls in pieces, and she falls to her knees, her arm broken. The wraith’s
eyes glitter and he raises his mace for another stroke.
But suddenly he stumbles
forward with a cry of bitter pain. His mace misses Eowyn, burying itself into
the ground. Merry’s crawling has finally brought him up to the Black Captain and
he’s stabbed him from behind, ‘piercing the sinew behind his mighty knee.’
Merry cries out Eowyn’s name, and she rallies, with her last strength driving
her sword between the wraith’s crown and his shoulders.
‘The sword broke into many
glittering shards. The crown rolled away with a clang. Eowyn fell forward upon
her fallen foe. But lo! The mantle and hauberk were empty. Shapeless they lay
now on the ground, torn and tumbled; and a cry went up into the shuddering air,
and faded to a shrill wailing, passing with the wind, a voice bodiless and thin
that died, and was swallowed up, and was never heard again in that age of the
world.’
Bits and Bobs
There has been much
speculation about the ‘Fell Beast’ the Nazgul rides. It being called ‘a
creature of an older world’ and its featherless webbed wings has put many
readers in mind of a pterodactyl or pteranodon. In the Jackson movies it is
rather dragonish, and I’ve heard many commentators refer to it and its brothers
as ‘dragons’, which in the world of Middle-earth are totally different
critters. In fact, it’s not even sure that the other Nazgul rode the same kind
of creature that’s described here; it’s spoken of as a ‘last untimely brood’
that Sauron had fed and given to his servant (note the singular) as his steed.
I know that in at least the rough drafts the wraiths steeds are sometimes
called ‘black vultures,’ I suppose in contrast to the Great Eagles.
The fact that the gleam of
the Lord’s eyes can be seen points, I think, to one of the properties of
invisibility in Tolkien’s works. Things can be invisible, like the Nazgul’s ‘unseen
sinews,’ but not the light that they put forth. This is a shown, if I remember
rightly, when Elendil has to draw on his hood to dowse the light of the
Elendilmir when he’s escaping wearing the Ring.
“Dernhelm,’ of course, means
‘helm of secrecy,’ and with her helmet off Eowyn is finally revealed. In the
Jackson movies Merry twigs to her identity right away, but we can assume here
that the hobbit, not expecting such a stratagem and being distracted with worry
over the ride and coming battle, was thinking of other things. Her bravery is
indeed great, being inspired by love for her uncle and the desire to do great
deeds, but her recklessness is also being driven by her rejection by Aragorn:
she is ‘seeking death.’ She mocks the Nazgul with the Rohirric term, ‘dwimmerlaik’
(work of sorcery). A sham, a cheat, no longer a man, a phantom, an empty thing.
The prophecy that the
Witch-king cannot be killed by any living man was made by Glorfindel way back in
the Second Age during the war with Angmar. Of course it echoes the prophecy in
Macbeth, that he cannot be killed by any man of woman born, that is fulfilled
when Macduff reveals he was ‘untimely ripped from his mother’s womb.’ The Lord
of the Nazgul has been riding along on the assurance of this prophecy (he must have
heard it somewhere, and puts credence in it), not considering the possible
ambiguities in the statement. As it is, a woman and a hobbit together encompass
his downfall.
And note that his threat to
Eowyn is not that he will kill her, but will bear her away to ‘the houses of
lamentation’, her flesh devoured and her mind left writhing under the gaze of
Sauron. Compare Gorbag’s saying ‘[The Nazgul] will peel the body off of you as
soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the dark on the other side.’
·
Some have speculated that the Witch-King’s
voice being ‘never heard in that age of the world again’ might imply that he
could be back in another age. But it seems more to be a literary way of saying ‘never,
ever again.’ The ring of the Nazgul that extended his life to an unnatural length,
whether on his finger (and thus possibly left among his remains) or held by
Sauron, would be destroyed when the One Ring is unmade. The Rankin/Bass The
Return of the King, among its many other travesties, has the Lord of the
Nazgul collapsing with the sound of a deflating balloon.
No comments:
Post a Comment