Chapter 13

Epilogue 1

The Kingdom of Gondor had decided to re-take some of their ancient lands on the Mordor side of the river.

The orcs of Mordor had responded and both sides were focused on battling each-other.

King Thror, Legend-Slayer, just happened to be traveling through the area at the time.

That was all the opportunity he needed.

He told the Fellowship of the King to wait for him, since they would not be able to follow.

Thorin could have - his weapon was sufficiently magic - but was off on an extended scouting mission just then, and Thror didn't want to lose the opportunity.

So Thror entered Mordor by walking right up a mountainside. He could do that, because his magic spear had taken that ability from Shelob. She had been able to walk right up cliff faces despite being the size of a house - clearly only magic could allow that.

And so now Thror could also do that - at least while holding his spear.

Few orcs were left in Mordor while the army was out battling Gondor.

And the few still there were easy for him to avoid, since he had a magic amulet granting him the senses of a spider, which included several benefits to his vision and also the ability to sense and interpret air-movements. With that, even an orc moving silently and behind solid cover was still easy for the King to detect.

When he encountered orcs alone or in pairs, he went ahead and just killed them. He did so quickly, so they could not raise a warning.

When he encountered groups, he avoided them and let them go - he did not have time to try to kill every orc in Mordor.

He was here for other reasons.

It was time to settle a cosmic injustice.

Soon enough, Thror had reached the base of the Tower of Mordor.

He walked, grinning in anticipation, right up the outside wall, on the side furthest from where the orc and Gondor armies battled, so the eye would likely not be aimed in his direction when he reached the top.

On top of the tower, the great fiery eye of Sauron gazed steadily towards the battle with the forces of Gondor, as Thror had hoped.

It was so focused that it didn't even notice when a dwarf with a glowing spear reached the top of the tower.

Nobody's peripheral vision was that good, and it was an eye, not an ear.

King Thror wanted to gloat or brag, but he was smarter than that. He knew that Sauron had strong magic as well as unknown powers, and that, to give him any warning would be to risk defeat.

And defeating Sauron was more important than bragging rights.

So Thror wasted no time and simply walked straight to his goal, then stabbed his spear up into the fiery eye.

The fiery eye shuddered, and immediately Sauron started summoning destructive magic in order to blast the interloper to smithereens. But, once started, he couldn't stop. And he couldn't direct the destructive magic away either, so it started destroying where it was - with Sauron.

The fiery eye shuddered severely .

Sauron's attempt to blast Thror with magic was turned against itself by the effect of Shelob's poison. Sauron didn't currently have muscles which could be fooled into overreacting and paralyzing him, but his magic and other resources could be similarly fooled - not by any normal poison, but by Shelob's supernatural poison, which Thror's spear could duplicate.

The eye shriveled into itself - slowly at first, then accelerating rapidly - then winked out.

The air suddenly felt fresher and cleaner somehow.

And somewhere, in a dark cave deep underground, The One Ring withered similarly, and an anguished voice yelled "NO! Not the Precious! Come back Precious!"

Thror wasted no time before beginning his return journey.

The great big fiery eye dominating the area had gone out, and that would be noticed quickly.

Orcs would gather.

He didn't want to be here when they did. No matter how good he was in melee combat, he wasn't immune to arrows.

Sauron's personality worked in Thror's favor, as he'd believed it would.

Orcs gathered, but they did so slowly. They knew from experience that Sauron took out his frustrations on those around him, and that the first to show up was the most likely to be Sauron's target.

Abusive personalities typically act like that, and Sauron had felt that his power was unequaled and therefore he could do anything he wanted to.

So his minions did their best to avoid him, especially when he was angry.

And so King Thror had no trouble getting far away from the Tower of Mordor before the orcs gathered there,

In fact he made it halfway back to the mountain where he had entered Mordor before he was found.

A Ring-wraith, flying a search pattern on some kind of huge winged reptile - not a dragon Thror noted with professional skill - saw Thror walking below and blew a horn to inform its fellows.

Then it attacked, without waiting for the others to gather.

Ring-wraiths tended to be overconfident like that.

They were used to being the toughest thing around.

They couldn't be hurt except by magic or extraordinary circumstances, and there had been few magic weapons around.

Their cursed swords mostly killed their targets with a single hit.

And the magic animating them made them physically stronger too.

They didn't get sick.

They didn't die of old age.

They didn't need to eat or sleep.

Becoming a wraith sounded like a good deal if you didn't think about it any further than that.

The Ring-wraith hadn't, or they'd have rejected any such deal as forcefully as they could have.

It turned out that being undead sucked.

Sure, your life never ended.

But your reasons for living did.

They did not need to eat, because they were dead - their cells no longer used chemical energy and nutrients derived from food in order to keep things running. Magic kept things running instead.

But the magic only needed the muscles, sinews, and nerves working, and the bones to stay together.

It did not need, and so did not maintain, organs like the stomach. That processed food to make chemical energy to be distributed to the cells.

So the stomach rotted away soon after they became undead.

So did the intestines for the same reason.

And the kidneys, and the liver.

The heart and circulatory system were not needed to carry chemical energy, nutrients, and oxygen to the cells, so they rotted away too.

And the lungs.

And a dead body certainly had no need to reproduce, so the sexual organs rotted too.

Many things in life can bring joy.

But it was human kings who had been given the 9 Rings of Power.

And kings generally have forgotten the simple pleasures of life, like spending time with family playing simple games.

Instead they have bought into the lie that they deserve only the best. So they often devote themselves to the sources of pleasure that society tells them are the best.

So, like many kings, these 9 had been used to feasts of the most delicious foods possible.

They had been used to having as much sex as they desired.

They'd used all the most expensive, rare and potent liquors, tobacco, and drugs they could.

They'd engaged in dangerous sports, like jousting, for the adrenaline rush it gave them.

And the moment they became undead, all of that ceased to do anything for them.

Without taste-buds, sexual organs, adrenal glands, a bloodstream to distribute drugs or functioning cells to react to them, and without even the ability to sleep and dream, their lives were miserable.

A misery that would never end, unless they were killed, which was very hard to do.

The Ring-wraith that now dove his mount to attack Thror had forgotten what pleasure was. All it ever did now was serve its master - its abusive master. And it's master's last, cut-short, command had been to find and kill this dwarf.

As they dove towards him, Thror reflected that "large flying reptile that isn't a dragon" was a really awkward phrase, and resolved to call it something else instead.

Some ancient legends spoke of wyverns. They didn't give much detail but what they did, sounded like large flying reptiles that were not dragons.

So he decided that, inaccurate or not, he was going to call these wyverns.

Then he threw a knife at the approaching wyvern, and dove aside as it passed him, smacked into the ground, and dug a furrow 30 feet long.

The knife he'd thrown had been one of his Spider Forged throwing stilettos.

The wyvern was too big for all of it to be paralyzed by the knife's magical re-creation of a giant spiders paralysis poison.

So Thror had aimed at a wing-root.

And he had hit.

A winged creature with only one wing working can not fly. So when the wyvern had attempted to steer towards the dodging dwarf, it had failed. And when it attempted to pull out of its dive, it had failed that too, and plowed into the ground.

Thror ran over to it, to continue the fight, but the wyverns neck had broken when it hit the ground.

The Ring-wraith was tangled up in one of the wyverns wings, and pinned under the wyvern's body. So Thror simply beheaded it before it could disentangle itself.

One less Nazgul.

He cut off a few square feet of wyvern wing, and then used a stick to move the Nazgul's cursed weapon onto the wing scrap and wrap it up.

He didn't want to leave those lying around to cause further trouble.

Similarly, he pocketed the Nazgul's Ring of Power. It would go to the elves, like the others had. They were working on a way to 'de-fang' them, or in other words, they were trying to remove any harmful aspects so they could be safely used. That would be easier now without Sauron around actively using them to corrupt.

King Thror had resumed his trip, dragging the wrapped cursed sword behind him on a short length of rope - dwarves always had some rope with them - when the last 4 Nazgul arrived.

The bodies of the dead wyvern and his Nazgul rider were still in sight, so the 4 flying overhead knew they needed to use some caution.

So they circled until all 4 had gathered, then they attacked.

Thror had chosen a small ruined house nearby to make his stand.

It's remaining walls were not high, but dwarves were short, so they were probably adequate for his needs.

Plus it wasn't like he needed to prevent the wyvern-riders from swooping in on him from all directions at once. Winged creatures that big need lots of room to fly in. If they tried to gang up on him while flying, they were likely to run into each-other, or at least into the turbulence caused by each-other.

In any case, these had seen that the last wyvern had crashed. They didn't know why it had, but just knowing it had was enough.

They landed their wyverns at a distance, and came in on foot from all directions at once.

Thror was not stupid - he did not give them time to get the battle conditions the way they wanted them.

Rather he charged the nearest one before the Ring-wraiths had time to coordinate.

As he ran, he slipped his recovered Spider-Forged throwing knife back into it's sheath, alongside 5 others. It would not likely affect the Ring-wraiths and, on the ground, the wyverns were much less of a threat.

Nazgul were not used to anything charging them. They were used to being feared, and fear makes an opponent hesitate.

They were also not good at coordinating their efforts. Each had been a king - used to giving orders, not taking them. If Sauron had been here to bully them, or the Witch-King, the other Nazgul would have obeyed orders and worked together better. But they weren't, so while each was posturing and trying to assert dominance over the others, King Thror got to the nearest one while the rest were still dismounting at some distance.

This Nazgul had seen him coming, and so had hurried itself.

It was standing before its mount, sword in hand waiting. As King Thror approached, the Nazgul started a dramatic overhead swing with its sword.

Such swings had a lot of force behind them.

And they really looked impressive.

But they also took a comparatively long time, during which your weapon was out of position for any kind of blocking.

Thror used a simple stop-thrust - a very quick direct stab that the enemy must block or be hit by.

The Nazgul couldn't block.

It was hit.

It died.

A Stop-Thrust wasn't dramatic, but it was effective.

Thror saw that the wyvern was making no move towards him. Apparently it wasn't interested in fighting unless forced to.

So he spun and charged the next threat, in hopes of taking them on before they could all gather.

The nearest two were already together. The last one was still at some distance beyond them, but could not be charged except through the nearer two.

So Thror charged the pair.

They were unusual in that they actually cooperated with each-other. They stood side by side and waited to receive the charge together, neither one shoving forwards to get the glory for himself.

That was almost unheard-of among evil folks.

Thror supposed it meant they were really scared.

But be that as it may, he got within reach and tried to stab the one on the right, which held a long scimitar and wore many jeweled necklaces.

It parried well, and its partner, using a long-sword with silver inlay, stabbed at Thror.

Thror parried, and the trio traded stabs and parries while Thror reflected how unusual this pair were.

The Ring-wraiths had been kings, and Nobility of all types, but especially kings, were famous for being useless. They developed no skills because they didn't need to. Everything was handed to them all through their lives. So they never learned to work at anything. And learning to fight effectively takes a lot of work. Some kings and nobility in particularly martial cultures learned it, but not all cultures are like that. So many kings remained useless lumps, because they saw no need to exert themselves to be any better than that.

Whatever cultures these 2 Ring-wraiths had come from must have been martial indeed, since they were quite skilled.

And Thror knew they hadn't developed that skill after becoming undead.

Undeath doesn't work that way.

Skills such as fighting center around something called "muscle memory", which comes from doing something so many times that it becomes a reflex - effectively hard-coded into the muscles.

But the muscles of undead do not work by the normal rules. They cannot develop muscle memory. Undead remain forever at the skill levels they had when they became undead.

Just one more reason why undeath is a bad deal, Thror reflected as he tried yet another way to attack in an effort to learn where the enemy was vulnerable.

That feint had promising results.

So, after parrying their next attacks, Thror tried a new trick.

He slashed at the face of the scimitar-wielder, who leaned back to avoid the blow.

But both Nazgul kept their focus on the sharp end of Thror's spear. This is typical, and usually a good idea. But it is a bad idea when the enemy can effectively use the other end of his weapon.

With their attention on his spear-point, Thror smashed the butt-end of his spear into the side of Ring-wraith #1's head, shattering the skull and spraying bone and bits of withered flesh into Ring-wraith #2.

As the necklace-wearer crumpled, Thror blocked the other Ring-wraiths long-sword using his forearm armor, then brought his spear back around to slash.

The Nazgul had diverted his attention to see what had defeated his companion and see if it was a threat to him.

It wasn't, yet it was. The spear's butt end was retreating and so was no longer a threat. But the spear end arrived while attention was distracted. The foot-long spear blade cleanly sliced off the Nazgul's head, killing it.

At the same moment, Thror sensed, with his magic amulet, movement of the air right behind him, indicating the last Ring-wraith had arrived and was attacking.

Thror threw himself to the side and leapt into a forward roll.

He could leap pretty far, due to the Spider-Forged properties of his magic weapon.

But still, as he came to his feet, the last Nazgul was arriving and attacking.

It was fast.

But Thror was faster.

The dwarf parried, improved his stance, parried again, feinted, parried again, and then did a simple beat-and-disengage maneuver.

That is where you make contact with the enemy's blade, as if to parry or beat it aside, then as they put force into it to resist you, you drop your weapon just beneath theirs to disengage them. Now the enemy's weapon is to one side of yours and still being forced away by them, as they push to resist a blow that isn't there.

So you simply stab directly in.

Usually, that it.

This Nazgul was magically fast, and so recovered too swiftly for a simple thrust to end it all.

But it had been from one of those cultures that disdained to put guards on their hilts.

Some cultures are like that - pretending that accepting unnecessary risk is the same as bravery.

So while Thror did not have time for a killing thrust, he did have time to take advantage of the lack of a guard, and cut off the enemy's fingers with a quick slash.

With no fingers remaining on that hand, the Nazgul's weapon dropped to the ground.

The dwarf's magic spear was inside the undead eye-socket before the dropped sword finished clattering.

Thror looked around rapidly for his next threat.

There was none.

Some orcs had gathered to watch. But, without Sauron there to order them to attack, they decided they didn't want any part of a battle with a guy could defeat 4 Ring-wraiths at once.

The orcs left.

Rapidly.

The 4 living wyverns were feeding on the dead one.

As King Thror approached them, they flew away.

Thror gathered the Rings of Power and cursed swords as before. He would deliver them to the elves who may find ways to re-use them safely, or at worst would know how to destroy them.

He gathered jeweled necklaces and other trinkets as well, as mementos of the battle if for no other reason.

And then he cut off the dead wyvern's head, to prove he had encountered such a creature.

He thought about it a moment.

The wyverns head was ugly, and unusual, but not that big. Someone could believe, if they wanted to, that the beast had been no bigger than a cow.

That would not do.

So King Thror also cut off a wing, at the root, and carried that out with him as well.

He had fond thoughts of using the wing - fully 30 feet long - as a pavilion after some taxidermy.

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Author's Note

The term wraith most often refers to disembodied undead - that is, they are incorporeal like ghosts.

Most often.

But Tolkien seems to have been thinking otherwise.

Disembodied beings have no need for mounts, armor, or hand-weapons. Yet Tolkien has the Ring-wraiths using all of these.

So I went with that.

Ring-wraiths in this story are a lot like mummies but with no bandages.