Post by Sir Langon on Dec 8, 2007 16:29:26 GMT -5
A/N: Props to the T man.
Chapter 8: Bittersweet
The sound of hooves on hard-packed earth reverberated through the woods as a battalion of knights raced to Imladris, dwelling of Elrond and one of the last bastions of Good west of the Misty Mountains. The group of cavalrymen rode down the narrow road and through the gate of Imladris into the courtyard. At their head was a man, taller than the rest, and behind him rode a man with a large unfurled flag bearing the emblems of the King of Gondor. The man, who at first glance seemed more like a champion was actually Earnur, King of Gondor, whose prowess on the field of combat was unmatched by any mortal and most Elves.
He rode on to the steps of the house where he dismount and immediately his horse was taken by an Elven attendant.
“At ease men.” He ordered and all of his knights dismounted and led their horses to the stable as the king walked into the house and up to a large porch where many elves, and a few men, were seated as if waiting on the arrival of the King.
“Welcome King Earnur.” said Lord Elrond, who motioned for the king to sit down on his right, “We have been expecting your arrival and we will now decide the fate of the shattered kingdom of Arnor. Aralder it is now your place to tell of the fall of Fornost.”
A tall ranger wearing travel stained clothes with a distinctly Numenorean air stood up and began to tell of how Fornost was taken and how he and King Arvedui had fled the burning city. Upon hearing the whole story, an unquenchable desire for the destruction of the Witch-King was ignited inside of Earnur who stood and cried, “I swear upon my life that Gondor will bring all of her might and crush this so called Witch-King of Angmar! I brought a large division of battle-hardened veterans with me and they will be here within the day.”
“Well then, Earnur shall lead a coalition army of Elves and Men to destroy the Witch-King at Carn Dum. I shall make sure that all of his army is waiting for us there.” Elrond said.
Immediately cries of acceptance and alliance were heard on the porch where the council was taking place and many of the commanders sent their lieutenants to ready their armies and soon the entire host was marching slowly towards Carn Dum.
The Witch-King knew of Earnur’s arrival and the departure of the Coalition well before the army was out of Eregion as all of the lands west of the Misty Mountains were laced with his spies and naught moved that he did not know about. Little did the Witch-king know that Elrond allowed him to see their building army in order to force him to draw his entire army to his fortress of Carn Dum. As such, the Witch-King summoned all of his lieutenants and their armies to his fortress of Carn Dum where he would crush the last real power of Elves and the last King of Gondor in one blow.
“We should go out and meet them, there is no escape from this ravine!” cried the wispy, hoarse voice that belong to Karsh, the Witch-King’s most deadly assassin.
“I have take consideration of that,” began the Witch-King in a low voice, “ and I have taken every precaution so that we might not fail in destroying this rabble. I have sent Morgomir along with a large detachment of Trolls and Men to close of their escape and to pin them against the walls of my fortress where we can utterly destroy them!”
“Now,” he continued, “You and Rogash will pack the first ring of the fortress with your weakest units, let the pathetic mongrels believe they are winning, if they destroy the front line, unleash the most powerful and experienced battalions on them to take their tired forces and sweep them away! Now, move out!”
The Witch-King, needless to say had every reason to be confident in the utter destruction of this last army of Men and Elves, but there once again fell on his heart a shadow. Like a foresight of the destruction of his kingdom. No matter, there was no way his army could fail now after it had won countless victories over his enemies.
There was a quiet rustle in a bush on the tope of the ravine in which Carn Dum was in. A Ranger had been dispatched to watch the movements of the Witch-King’s armies and it seemed to him that the entire race of both orcs and trolls had been encamped within the walls of the Witch-King’s fortress. As scared as the Ranger was, he quietly left and hurried back to Earnur’s camp nearly two miles from the mouth of the ravine.
“My lord,” he panted breathlessly, “All of the Witch-King’s armies have gathered at his fortress, or so it seems. There is no way we can destroy them all!”
“Have faith,” replied the grim king, “Langon, have all of the Rangers that remain under your command as well as all of the Elven archers and line the tops of the ravine. Your signal to start firing will be the blasting a trumpets. Let us prepare to move out!”
Soon, the entire army was on the move once again and it did not take long for the seemingly diminished host to position themselves within the mouth of the Ravine just out of bowshot of the outer wall of Carn Dum. There was no parley with the Witch-King, He and his forces would be shown no quarter and no prisoners, except the Men who repented of the fight, would be spared.
This blatant show of brazen audacity infuriated the Morgomir who, cut of from communication with his master, unleashed an untimely assault against the rear of the Coalition. They would have taken them by surprise and maybe even defeated them if not for the vigilance of the Rangers who noticed their troop movements long before they were within range of the main army. So, it was not the backs of soldiers that Morgomir found, it was the spear tips and shields of the Coalition that he was confronted with.
Upon charging into this, Morgomir’s entire army was thrown into disarray and only after a great bulk of his forces had been slain was he able to gain control and renew the attack on the Coalition.
Wading through the battle with his guard of Black Numenorean Champions, Morgomir struck into the King’s bodyguard where he himself locked into battle with Earnur. They both fought like mad beasts and neither orc, troll, man, or elf dared to get near them for fear of being hewn down.
“I will kill you pathetic mortal!” spat the Lieutenant of Carn Dum.
“No! It is you that shall be killed worm!” laughed Earnur in his battle frenzy. With that, Earnur drove his blade through Morgomir’s chest; however, he did not immediately die, he first let out a death screech that caused all but the most hale of warriors to drop to their knees before he just disappeared, leaving a pile of armor and a blade.
“What was that!” exclaimed the stunned king.
“That was the screech of a Nazgul for it is as I feared, the Witch-King and his lieutenant, Morgomir, are both of that fell order and they cannot die.” said Glorfindel.
“We’ll see how well that lasts when I put my blade through the Witch-King.” replied the defiant king.
“No,” Glorfindel began, “you will not kill him. Indeed, no man will ever kill him. Something else will defeat the Witch-King.”
The death screech of Morgomir was the signal of his down fall and the Witch-King knew it. However, he was going to take down every last man or elf that he could before the end came. After his Lieutenant’s defeat, the Witch-King knew that his surprise attack would fall apart and turn into a rout.
“Rogash, Karsh!” yelled the Witch-King, “We are not going to wait on them to penetrate the walls; we are going to fight them head on!”
“Yes lord!” bellowed the hulking Troll as he charged out of the keep bellowing orders for the entire army to issue from the gates.
“We are going to be defeated aren’t we my lord?” asked Karsh in his eerie voice.
“Unfortunately, yes we are my faithful assassin, unfortunately we are.” Replied the Witch-King, “I knew that my kingdom wouldn’t last, but we are going to take as many of them down with us as we can.”
The Coalition had just turned to besiege the walls when suddenly several sections or the wall fell down, the gates flew off of their hinges and out poured the entirety of the Witch-King’s army with Rogash at the head swinging his huge sword bellowing as he came. This took Earnur and Elrond completely by surprise and they were barely able to signal the archers to begin bombarding the enemy forces before they were engaged in combat with a group of trolls.
The desperation of the orcs, trolls, and evil men being pinned into the escapeless ravine gave them a surge of strength like a cornered animal that has been injured. The Coalition was barely able to hold their lines and they only did so because of the demoralizing effect that the barrage of the archers had on the enemy troops.
The battle quickly came to a standstill with neither side gaining ground and both sides taking heavy losses. Rogash had been killed early on in the battle when he tried to kill Elrond who quickly dispatched the behemoth troll because of his swordsmanship that had been perfected for several millennia. Also, most of the trolls, who had been foremost in the battle, had been slain, but only after they had killed an entire brigade of the Gondorian foot soldiers.
However, during the entire battle, the Witch-King had sat atop his fell mount watching the battle from a pier of rock in the inner most tier of his fortress. He knew that the battle was beyond recovery when the Coalition pushed the remaining orcs and men into the second level, dwindling his forces down to just the remains of Karsh’s soldiers and his own personal bodyguard. What puzzled him though was that Earnur hadn’t sent his veteran knights charging through the ranks of his troops to finish off what was left of his once vast forces.
Earnur and Elrond were no fools, they knew if they tried a mounted charge against Karsh’s forces, it would turn into a rout, the fear that the Wraith exhumed would overpower their control of the horses and completely stop the charge. Fortunately, Karsh had underestimated Elrond’s perception. As the stealthy wraith closed in to assassinate Earnur who was standing beside Elrond, he was suddenly cut down by a swift and terrible blade that had been infused with the power of Elrond’s ring of power. This force turned the wraith from a terrible, ghostly assassin back into the shade of a noble captain of men.
“Thank you,” said Caftan who was now freed of the Iron Crown.
“You are most welcome,” replied Elrond, “Go now to the halls of your forefathers and be at peace.” With a sigh, Caftan disappeared into nothing and was gone.
The Witch-King audibly groaned when he saw his deadliest servant defeated and that Earnur and Glorfindel had mounted up along with all of the Gondorian Knights and Elvish Lancers and had begun a charge into the remainder of Karsh’s forces. He knew it would be a complete and total rout and that he would have to escape through the secret way that only he himself knew about.
“You may have won the war and destroyed my kingdom,” yelled the Witch-King, “But I have many fortresses and you, Earnur, shall die by my hand before your reign is over!”
With that, the Witch-King turned and fled out of the ravine, destroying the passage as he went. Earnur, however was ready to take the Witch-King on at that moment and spurred the charge all the way through the most battle-hardened of the enemy’s troops scattering them. Glorfindel saw what the human king was planning to do and cut him off.
“Remember what I said Earnur” began the elf, “the Witch-King will not die by the hand of any man that is alive or ever shall be alive!”
With that, Earnur turned his forces and charged through the remainder of the army and completely slaughtered all that did not give themselves up. The sound of triumphant war cries and the loud blaring of trumpets could be heard for miles, and all things that were good took heart, while all evil things fled and hid themselves. Those of the enemy’s soldiery that had not been killed were swiftly set to work tearing down the Witch-King’s fortress.
The leaders of the Coalition were shocked to see the condition of many of the Dunedain who had been captured earlier in the war had been held prisoner in Carn Dum and many were still alive, though barely. These, the leaders immediately gave care to and sent back to Rivendell by wagon.
Peace had returned to the North and almost the entirety of Angmar had been cleansed of the Witch-King’s evil, unfortunately many things that were once good had been destroyed. The Barrow-Downs had become a place of horror where Barrow-Wights lurked and those who entered, seldom left. Fornost, the once proud and strong city of men had been destroyed and the lesser men of the area had renamed it Deadman’s d**e because of its haunted appearance. Also, the once proud kingdoms of Arnor were virtually empty and devoid of life except for the stray animal that would pass through.
Earnur, had retuned to Gondor soon after all of his men had been healed, unfortunately he had lost many men in the battle and only returned home with a two thirds of the army he left with. True to his word, the Witch-King challenged Earnur to a duel in front of the gates of Minas Morgul, his chief citadel, from which Earnur never returned and rule of the city passed to Meneldil and the line of the Stewards.
Aranarth assumed title of Chieftain of the Dunedain and, with the help of Aralder, protected what was left of the North from most dangers. Fortunately his line continued unbroken and unbeknownst to Sauron so that one day a king might claim the thrones of Gondor and Arnor.
Epilogue
“As you can see,” continued Glorfindel, “much was risked by your forefathers so that you and I might be here today and continue to protect the lands of the North from danger.” He looked around at the Dunedain who had been listening to his tale for many hours and spotted one young recruit who had fallen asleep.
“You there! Recruit! Tell me all that you know of the war with the Witch-king of Angmar!” commanded Glorfindel. Unfortunately, the recruit had fallen asleep early on in the tale and just stuttered as his comrades around him laughed.
(A/N: It is finally done! *pats self on back* leave a review if you wish!)
Chapter 8: Bittersweet
The sound of hooves on hard-packed earth reverberated through the woods as a battalion of knights raced to Imladris, dwelling of Elrond and one of the last bastions of Good west of the Misty Mountains. The group of cavalrymen rode down the narrow road and through the gate of Imladris into the courtyard. At their head was a man, taller than the rest, and behind him rode a man with a large unfurled flag bearing the emblems of the King of Gondor. The man, who at first glance seemed more like a champion was actually Earnur, King of Gondor, whose prowess on the field of combat was unmatched by any mortal and most Elves.
He rode on to the steps of the house where he dismount and immediately his horse was taken by an Elven attendant.
“At ease men.” He ordered and all of his knights dismounted and led their horses to the stable as the king walked into the house and up to a large porch where many elves, and a few men, were seated as if waiting on the arrival of the King.
“Welcome King Earnur.” said Lord Elrond, who motioned for the king to sit down on his right, “We have been expecting your arrival and we will now decide the fate of the shattered kingdom of Arnor. Aralder it is now your place to tell of the fall of Fornost.”
A tall ranger wearing travel stained clothes with a distinctly Numenorean air stood up and began to tell of how Fornost was taken and how he and King Arvedui had fled the burning city. Upon hearing the whole story, an unquenchable desire for the destruction of the Witch-King was ignited inside of Earnur who stood and cried, “I swear upon my life that Gondor will bring all of her might and crush this so called Witch-King of Angmar! I brought a large division of battle-hardened veterans with me and they will be here within the day.”
“Well then, Earnur shall lead a coalition army of Elves and Men to destroy the Witch-King at Carn Dum. I shall make sure that all of his army is waiting for us there.” Elrond said.
Immediately cries of acceptance and alliance were heard on the porch where the council was taking place and many of the commanders sent their lieutenants to ready their armies and soon the entire host was marching slowly towards Carn Dum.
The Witch-King knew of Earnur’s arrival and the departure of the Coalition well before the army was out of Eregion as all of the lands west of the Misty Mountains were laced with his spies and naught moved that he did not know about. Little did the Witch-king know that Elrond allowed him to see their building army in order to force him to draw his entire army to his fortress of Carn Dum. As such, the Witch-King summoned all of his lieutenants and their armies to his fortress of Carn Dum where he would crush the last real power of Elves and the last King of Gondor in one blow.
“We should go out and meet them, there is no escape from this ravine!” cried the wispy, hoarse voice that belong to Karsh, the Witch-King’s most deadly assassin.
“I have take consideration of that,” began the Witch-King in a low voice, “ and I have taken every precaution so that we might not fail in destroying this rabble. I have sent Morgomir along with a large detachment of Trolls and Men to close of their escape and to pin them against the walls of my fortress where we can utterly destroy them!”
“Now,” he continued, “You and Rogash will pack the first ring of the fortress with your weakest units, let the pathetic mongrels believe they are winning, if they destroy the front line, unleash the most powerful and experienced battalions on them to take their tired forces and sweep them away! Now, move out!”
The Witch-King, needless to say had every reason to be confident in the utter destruction of this last army of Men and Elves, but there once again fell on his heart a shadow. Like a foresight of the destruction of his kingdom. No matter, there was no way his army could fail now after it had won countless victories over his enemies.
There was a quiet rustle in a bush on the tope of the ravine in which Carn Dum was in. A Ranger had been dispatched to watch the movements of the Witch-King’s armies and it seemed to him that the entire race of both orcs and trolls had been encamped within the walls of the Witch-King’s fortress. As scared as the Ranger was, he quietly left and hurried back to Earnur’s camp nearly two miles from the mouth of the ravine.
“My lord,” he panted breathlessly, “All of the Witch-King’s armies have gathered at his fortress, or so it seems. There is no way we can destroy them all!”
“Have faith,” replied the grim king, “Langon, have all of the Rangers that remain under your command as well as all of the Elven archers and line the tops of the ravine. Your signal to start firing will be the blasting a trumpets. Let us prepare to move out!”
Soon, the entire army was on the move once again and it did not take long for the seemingly diminished host to position themselves within the mouth of the Ravine just out of bowshot of the outer wall of Carn Dum. There was no parley with the Witch-King, He and his forces would be shown no quarter and no prisoners, except the Men who repented of the fight, would be spared.
This blatant show of brazen audacity infuriated the Morgomir who, cut of from communication with his master, unleashed an untimely assault against the rear of the Coalition. They would have taken them by surprise and maybe even defeated them if not for the vigilance of the Rangers who noticed their troop movements long before they were within range of the main army. So, it was not the backs of soldiers that Morgomir found, it was the spear tips and shields of the Coalition that he was confronted with.
Upon charging into this, Morgomir’s entire army was thrown into disarray and only after a great bulk of his forces had been slain was he able to gain control and renew the attack on the Coalition.
Wading through the battle with his guard of Black Numenorean Champions, Morgomir struck into the King’s bodyguard where he himself locked into battle with Earnur. They both fought like mad beasts and neither orc, troll, man, or elf dared to get near them for fear of being hewn down.
“I will kill you pathetic mortal!” spat the Lieutenant of Carn Dum.
“No! It is you that shall be killed worm!” laughed Earnur in his battle frenzy. With that, Earnur drove his blade through Morgomir’s chest; however, he did not immediately die, he first let out a death screech that caused all but the most hale of warriors to drop to their knees before he just disappeared, leaving a pile of armor and a blade.
“What was that!” exclaimed the stunned king.
“That was the screech of a Nazgul for it is as I feared, the Witch-King and his lieutenant, Morgomir, are both of that fell order and they cannot die.” said Glorfindel.
“We’ll see how well that lasts when I put my blade through the Witch-King.” replied the defiant king.
“No,” Glorfindel began, “you will not kill him. Indeed, no man will ever kill him. Something else will defeat the Witch-King.”
The death screech of Morgomir was the signal of his down fall and the Witch-King knew it. However, he was going to take down every last man or elf that he could before the end came. After his Lieutenant’s defeat, the Witch-King knew that his surprise attack would fall apart and turn into a rout.
“Rogash, Karsh!” yelled the Witch-King, “We are not going to wait on them to penetrate the walls; we are going to fight them head on!”
“Yes lord!” bellowed the hulking Troll as he charged out of the keep bellowing orders for the entire army to issue from the gates.
“We are going to be defeated aren’t we my lord?” asked Karsh in his eerie voice.
“Unfortunately, yes we are my faithful assassin, unfortunately we are.” Replied the Witch-King, “I knew that my kingdom wouldn’t last, but we are going to take as many of them down with us as we can.”
The Coalition had just turned to besiege the walls when suddenly several sections or the wall fell down, the gates flew off of their hinges and out poured the entirety of the Witch-King’s army with Rogash at the head swinging his huge sword bellowing as he came. This took Earnur and Elrond completely by surprise and they were barely able to signal the archers to begin bombarding the enemy forces before they were engaged in combat with a group of trolls.
The desperation of the orcs, trolls, and evil men being pinned into the escapeless ravine gave them a surge of strength like a cornered animal that has been injured. The Coalition was barely able to hold their lines and they only did so because of the demoralizing effect that the barrage of the archers had on the enemy troops.
The battle quickly came to a standstill with neither side gaining ground and both sides taking heavy losses. Rogash had been killed early on in the battle when he tried to kill Elrond who quickly dispatched the behemoth troll because of his swordsmanship that had been perfected for several millennia. Also, most of the trolls, who had been foremost in the battle, had been slain, but only after they had killed an entire brigade of the Gondorian foot soldiers.
However, during the entire battle, the Witch-King had sat atop his fell mount watching the battle from a pier of rock in the inner most tier of his fortress. He knew that the battle was beyond recovery when the Coalition pushed the remaining orcs and men into the second level, dwindling his forces down to just the remains of Karsh’s soldiers and his own personal bodyguard. What puzzled him though was that Earnur hadn’t sent his veteran knights charging through the ranks of his troops to finish off what was left of his once vast forces.
Earnur and Elrond were no fools, they knew if they tried a mounted charge against Karsh’s forces, it would turn into a rout, the fear that the Wraith exhumed would overpower their control of the horses and completely stop the charge. Fortunately, Karsh had underestimated Elrond’s perception. As the stealthy wraith closed in to assassinate Earnur who was standing beside Elrond, he was suddenly cut down by a swift and terrible blade that had been infused with the power of Elrond’s ring of power. This force turned the wraith from a terrible, ghostly assassin back into the shade of a noble captain of men.
“Thank you,” said Caftan who was now freed of the Iron Crown.
“You are most welcome,” replied Elrond, “Go now to the halls of your forefathers and be at peace.” With a sigh, Caftan disappeared into nothing and was gone.
The Witch-King audibly groaned when he saw his deadliest servant defeated and that Earnur and Glorfindel had mounted up along with all of the Gondorian Knights and Elvish Lancers and had begun a charge into the remainder of Karsh’s forces. He knew it would be a complete and total rout and that he would have to escape through the secret way that only he himself knew about.
“You may have won the war and destroyed my kingdom,” yelled the Witch-King, “But I have many fortresses and you, Earnur, shall die by my hand before your reign is over!”
With that, the Witch-King turned and fled out of the ravine, destroying the passage as he went. Earnur, however was ready to take the Witch-King on at that moment and spurred the charge all the way through the most battle-hardened of the enemy’s troops scattering them. Glorfindel saw what the human king was planning to do and cut him off.
“Remember what I said Earnur” began the elf, “the Witch-King will not die by the hand of any man that is alive or ever shall be alive!”
With that, Earnur turned his forces and charged through the remainder of the army and completely slaughtered all that did not give themselves up. The sound of triumphant war cries and the loud blaring of trumpets could be heard for miles, and all things that were good took heart, while all evil things fled and hid themselves. Those of the enemy’s soldiery that had not been killed were swiftly set to work tearing down the Witch-King’s fortress.
The leaders of the Coalition were shocked to see the condition of many of the Dunedain who had been captured earlier in the war had been held prisoner in Carn Dum and many were still alive, though barely. These, the leaders immediately gave care to and sent back to Rivendell by wagon.
Peace had returned to the North and almost the entirety of Angmar had been cleansed of the Witch-King’s evil, unfortunately many things that were once good had been destroyed. The Barrow-Downs had become a place of horror where Barrow-Wights lurked and those who entered, seldom left. Fornost, the once proud and strong city of men had been destroyed and the lesser men of the area had renamed it Deadman’s d**e because of its haunted appearance. Also, the once proud kingdoms of Arnor were virtually empty and devoid of life except for the stray animal that would pass through.
Earnur, had retuned to Gondor soon after all of his men had been healed, unfortunately he had lost many men in the battle and only returned home with a two thirds of the army he left with. True to his word, the Witch-King challenged Earnur to a duel in front of the gates of Minas Morgul, his chief citadel, from which Earnur never returned and rule of the city passed to Meneldil and the line of the Stewards.
Aranarth assumed title of Chieftain of the Dunedain and, with the help of Aralder, protected what was left of the North from most dangers. Fortunately his line continued unbroken and unbeknownst to Sauron so that one day a king might claim the thrones of Gondor and Arnor.
Epilogue
“As you can see,” continued Glorfindel, “much was risked by your forefathers so that you and I might be here today and continue to protect the lands of the North from danger.” He looked around at the Dunedain who had been listening to his tale for many hours and spotted one young recruit who had fallen asleep.
“You there! Recruit! Tell me all that you know of the war with the Witch-king of Angmar!” commanded Glorfindel. Unfortunately, the recruit had fallen asleep early on in the tale and just stuttered as his comrades around him laughed.
(A/N: It is finally done! *pats self on back* leave a review if you wish!)