Chapter 11 – Battles Fought
At the Gate of Ennyn Ur…
The first wave of orcs came through the gate of Ennyn Ur within minutes. It had been a company of fifty which was closest to the southern pass when Eltariel's challenge rang out. Peter had already stationed the archers with him to either side of the gate and before it. The orc bodies dropped within seconds of crossing the threshold before they even had a chance to reach the rest of the waiting warriors, their black blood spilling on the ground before it. The orcish archers on the towers, once they had recovered themselves attempted to drive their Narnian counterparts away from the base of the gates, but found themselves quickly dispatched by tiny, unseen knives in the darkness.
These were followed by more, smaller companies shortly afterwards within random intervals, but by the first hour after the midnight, the flow of orc soldiers became nearly constant and the Narnian cavalry and foot soldiers that had joined their king and his captains for what they knew would be a marathon fight through the darkness of the night found themselves engaging wave after wave of an unending stream of twisted nightmarish caricatures of elves or men.
The mice commandos whom Peter had wisely stationed at the top of the gates did their duty well, keeping it free from Sauron's own archers. The orc commanders, not being able to see Klippiwick and his mice for their size, couldn't understand why their own troops sent up to its heights kept being cut down and lost so quickly. Rumors quickly spread among them of wraiths in the attacking army, ghostly assassins among their ranks and soon, no matter how hard the enemy commanders beat and whipped them, the orc archers refused to take their stations at the top of the towers of the gates. Thus the Narnians hid up against the very walls of the barrier with impunity.
Peter cut and slashed from the back of his warhorse, riding down one orc, before thrusting his blade through another's eye, then turning and with a great and deadly arc decapitating another. His middle aged human arms grew tired, but still he pressed on, unwilling to retreat from the fight or abandon those he had called to hold the line.
The high king saw the gigantic minotaurs fighting back to back with fauns and centaurs in the continuous melee against the ever increasing onslaught, their battle axes swinging again and again dealing death with every blow. He saw sons of Adam from Archenland holding the line alongside dwarves and talking wolves. Narnian rhinoceroses charged the enemy, stampeding over them, while massive Narnian bears sent more flying with their great swipes, crushing them with their blows. Narnian leopards leaped at them, tearing out throats and ripping foul flesh with their sharp claws while Narnian wolves hunted alongside them. Again and again the dark night was filled with the animal roars and screams of the combatants as they unleashed a savage fury on the army of shadow.
The elf woman, Eltariel, had forgone the gelding she rode and leaped at the orcs with both swords drawn as though she were a whirlwind of elvish steel. The high king hadn't before believed a natural creature could move so gracefully and lethally in combat as she did. Every time she moved it was like a choreographed ballet of death against the fiends, where a pirouette resulted in a disembowelment or decapitation, and a leap over an orc resulted in that monster's head being cleaved in two. It was beautiful and terrifying, mesmerizing even to watch if he would have been afforded the opportunity to do so.
The stench of death was everywhere as the orc corpses began to build around the gates from both the archers' arrows and the bite of the Narnians' steel. But not all of the corpses were those of orcs. If the enemy's purpose behind the waste of the continuous stream of soldiers was to slowly whittle down their forces, it was achieving its end as the orcs managed to reduce the Narnians presence one by one.
And the battle for Ennyn Ur dragged on, minute after minute, hour after hour.
When he was able to realize it, the one enemy Sauron did not send against them in the wee hours of that dark morning were the nazgul. The skies had remained strangely clear since the beginnings of the orc onslaught. He did not have much time to dwell on it however as another pale skinned attacker aimed a crudely forged iron sword towards his warhorse's armored head. The horse reared and kicked at the attacker, implanting the stallion's hoof prints into the orc's skull hard, cracking the creature's head and exposing blackened gray matter. The orc fell and didn't get up again. Immediately another took its place.
After an eternity of fighting, the high king raised his lion crested shield once more to block another fiend's ax, and meant to counter-attack with his own blade, but the warhorse he rode stumbled and the high king missed. The orc dodged the strike, and came around for another of his own. Peter raised his shield once more, but his arm, feeling as though full of lead, didn't want to respond as fast as his mind processed it. The ax struck against Peter's breastplate and the high king fell from his saddle to the ground. The orc raised his ax again, and then Peter watched as a massive double bladed battle-ax tore the orc's head from his shoulders. The next thing the high king saw through the slits of his helm was a minotaur's gargantuan bovine head looking down on him and reaching out his hand.
"My king!" the minotaur called in its deep resonant voice, "Take my hand!"
Peter reached out with his steel gauntlet and took the bullish warrior's hand. The minotaur pulled him from the ground and to his feet. "You've been fighting for hours! Your mount is down! I've got to get you to the rear line! Let the others take the front for now! You can't keep going like this!"
Peter looked to where the minotaur was gesturing and saw his warhorse, fallen to the ground, deep scarlet gashes across its body and neck. The white stallion wasn't moving.
Wordlessly, he nodded at the minotaur, only then realizing that he could barely move his legs and arms for the bloody work he had forced them to keep up. The minotaur took his king and half led him, half carried him through the warring soldiers back away from the gate. Soon, they reached the rear line where a number of others had been taken to rest while those who had been in the rear at first stepped up to contend with the continuous flow of orcs through the gate.
Peter flipped up the visor to his armored helm and looked around at the exhausted warriors trying to catch their breaths and come to their senses for just a few minutes before heading back to the front. Many were injured and were bleeding from various non-fatal wounds.
"How bad… how bad are we?" He asked the minotaur who remained to ensure his king's safety, his breath coming in gasps. His arms felt like lead, and his legs were shaky as he tried to stand.
"I've no count, your majesty, but we're still holding them back. The archers are still taking most of them at the portal, collecting their own arrows and those off the dead where they can. If I was to guess, I'd say we've lost twenty percent of our force.
"How long til dawn?" Peter then asked, realizing he had no idea how long it had actually been since the fighting began in earnest.
"It's hard to say in this cursed land." his bodyguard replied. "Day's not much different from night. Maybe an hour, maybe two. Rest for as long as you can, your majesty. You've more than proved yourself in war for a son of Adam this day. I daresay you've put some of my own people to shame with the number of orcs that you've felled by your own hand!"
Peter wanted to argue, he wanted to march back out their but his own legs betrayed him just then. He didn't want his troops to bear the brunt of it and he be safe in the rear. That was no place for a king to be in his mind, but he couldn't. Conceding to the reality of the situation, he nodded to his protector and said with a smirk, "Five minutes, then?"
The minotaur grinned and replied, "As your majesty wishes."
He did not see the elf woman with the exhausted in the rear, and yet she had been fighting on the front for just as long as he. "Where is Eltariel?" He asked.
"The woman?" the minotaur responded. "Last I caught sight of her, and that's a damn hard thing to do in the middle of a fight mind you, she was still moving like a storm of her own making through the orcs. I've never seen one fight so fast and so hard as she, 'specially a female. She's not slowed down one wit since she called the enemy out, now has she? I'd hate to face an army of her people if they're all like that one."
Peter nodded in agreement, wondering if it was the constitution of her people or the power lent her by the ring she wore, as his wobbly legs forced him to the ground to sit next to a faun who had received a nasty scarlet slash across his face. One of his goat like horns was missing, and only a bloody stump remained where it had once been. The faun nodded at his king's presence respectfully, and Peter recognized him. He was the third captain of the faun swordsmen.
"How fares your company, Captain?" Peter asked.
"Better than some, your majesty, last I saw. Have no fear, our people will keep the bastards in check, you'll see." The faun captain replied.
"It's the Archenlanders that've taken the brunt of what losses we've seen, your majesty." A centaur that stood nearby told him. "They've the heart for the fight, but they tire faster than the rest of us, and forgive me for saying it, but your kind don't have the same senses at night or reflexes some of the rest of us do. I'd be lying if I told you we'd see most of them still standing by dawn."
"Haven't they been rotated out for rest?" The high king asked, concerned.
"When we can relieve them. The orcs tend to target them first as if they know they might be easier prey." The centaur responded.
In spite of his exhaustion, Peter's mind began to recall the details of the fighting he had done, and what he had and hadn't seen. From the downing of his first orc that night it had been one moving blur, the attackers blending one into another as his sword came down on them and their vital fluids sprayed against his armor and his horse until he was once more covered in black gore. His mind came around to the absence of the nazgul. It had been such a powerful tool of Sauron's at the river battle. Why hadn't the dark lord sent another? Supposedly there had been nine according to Sir Eric and Eltariel.
And then the answer hit him. Aslan. Aslan had destroyed the nazgul that Sauron had sent, and this had surprised the dark lord. The enemy couldn't know that the Great Lion wasn't with them at the moment. If he himself only had a very limited number of such wraiths, would he send them into battle knowing that the enemy could destroy them at will? Or would he test the enemy forces with pawns and grunts to see what weapons they fielded against these first? There was also the question of Eltariel and the ring she bore. The power Peter felt radiating from her as she challenged Sauron was easily the equal if not the superior to the wraith's projected fear. Between the threat of Aslan and Eltariel's ring he could imagine Sauron would be hesitant to field his most powerful servants just yet.
Peter felt his strength returning to his legs and arms, and he stood up from where he had sat, testing them. They were sore but serviceable, and unlike many, he had received no wounds that his armor had not blocked.
"My king, are you well?" The minotaur asked, concerned.
"Well enough to return to the battle in the next rotation. I've no right to be sitting here just winded while the rest of our troops suffer and die to keep the monsters at bay. Will you fight at my side, sir minotaur?" Peter responded.
"To the death, your majesty!" The minotaur responded.
"I will join you, if you will have me, your majesty!" The centaur added, drawing his heavy two handed sword.
"And I!" Another voice called out.
"And I!" Still another Narnian responded.
"Then we join the fight to relieve our brothers! For Narnia and for Aslan!" Peter told them, taking up his sword and shield once more, ready to march into battle with all those who would join them.
"For Narnia and for Aslan!" Came the chorus of replies.
It was then that both centaur and minotaur recognized each other from the recruitment camp. The centaur had questioned the loyalties of the minotaurs who came to fight, and the minotaur had challenged him to see who would be the better fighter when the time came.
"Are you ready to fight alongside a minotaur now, centaur?" The minotaur jabbed at him.
"I'm ready to fight and die alongside a brother Narnian, friend." The centaur replied.
The minotaur grinned and saluted the centaur in sincere response.
The high king and those with him rejoined the front lines, relieving those who had been sorely pressed there, and sending them to the rear lines. In spite of his tired limbs, he felt refreshed and renewed as he fought on foot side by side and back to back with his troops, taking on more waves of the fiends that made it past their archers.
They maintained these rotations, fighting for as long as they could until they were relieved once more by those who had been given the chance to rest. Their numbers continued to dwindle even as the orcs continued to fall before them. They fought and fought until the sky began to lighten, even if only a little.
Then Peter heard the sound from the sky that he has dreaded to hear. The screeching cry which had accompanied the nazgul. And not just one. Huge, dark colored shapes filled the sky even as dawn began to break. The flew from the south, and were terrifying to see.
This is it then. Peter thought as the sight of the black drakes filling the sky above him took the heart out of him. There must have been dozens of them. Without Aslan present, there was no way the Narnians could…
Dozens? He realized. By his count there were only eight nazgul left that they knew of.
The next thing the high king of Narnia knew, and a sight which caused his heart to leap in his chest with relief and disbelief, the drakes began unleashing dragonfire on the other side of the gate against the enemy forces. The sky was ablaze with the wrath of the great creatures upon the army of shadow, and the drakes began to dive into the legions of orcs, grabbing them with their claws to carry them screaming high into the sky before releasing them to their doom.
"Carnan's reinforcements!" The king heard the elf woman shout from somewhere nearby. "Carnan has sent a flight of drakes to aid us!"
And then, just as Peter was heartened and took up the fight with a renewed vigor, he heard a Narnian horn sound from the rear, and the pounding footsteps of marching troops. Overhead, the shapes of huge birds of prey and flying beasts, hundreds of them, their screeches as they passed like battle cries across the landscape, flew fast from the south and past the soldiers on the ground across the gate where they began to drop their deadly payloads on the hordes of orcish troops that had amassed themselves on the other side. Explosions began to ring out from beyond Ennyn Ur.
A cheer rose up from the Narnians even as they continued to fight on, and the new, fresh troops quickly came to take their exhausted counterparts' places sending these worn and weary soldiers back to the rear once more to receive what attention and rest could be afforded them.
As Peter was once more rotated to the rear, now having trouble even standing on his own when out of the reach of the orc swords, he was met by a similarly armored warrior with a crown adorning his helm as well. When his brother saw the high king being escorted by the minotaur and centaur who had stayed by his side the rest of the battle, he left his horse and ran to him, catching him as he lost his footing yet again, and embracing him fiercely even though in armor and in front of their inferiors.
King Edmond did not care if anyone saw as he hugged his brother tightly. "I thought… I didn't know… I..." He didn't know what to say to his older brother. The fear that he might have arrived to find Peter as one of the casualties had consumed him all night.
He didn't have to say anything, "I know, Ed." Peter replied, returning his brother's embrace. Then the high king told him, "We're still here. We've held the line, Ed."
The king then turned to the minotaur who had been his protector that night and told him, "Find the elf woman. Bring her to the rear lines where she has all of our forces between her and Sauron's. We've more than gotten their attention, I'm certain. Our priority now is to protect her and the ring she carries from them. And recall Klippiwick's company from the gate. Reclaiming its heights will be the least of the orcs' concerns now."
"It will be done, your majesty." The minotaur told him, respectfully bending his great bull's head in a half bow.
Behind him, he could hear the sounds of the dwarven bombs mixed with the cries of Carnan's drakes hitting their targets beyond the hateful gate with explosive force again, and again, and again. And slowly, the stream of orcs from the gate's portal dwindled rather than increased as the monsters were forced to react to this new deadly airborne threat against them.
Over the Plateau of Gorgoroth…
Sir Eric surveyed the vast ocean of fel companies beneath them as he flew his bombing mission against the dark lord's forces. As far as he could tell, Eltariel's gambit had more than succeeded. Tens of thousands of orcs, trolls, ologs, and every other kind of fiend Sauron could spare had positioned themselves on the other side of the narrow opening just waiting their turn to rush through at the invaders. But that gate which had been built to protect Sauron's volcanic domain now worked against them for its narrowness and restrictive access just as had been predicted. And while they waited to pass through, the Narnian griffins and eagles rained doom and death from the skies upon the unsuspecting orcs that were hard pressed together.
Terrified, the orcs went into a panic. Many attempted to scatter and run in any direction they could to get away from the flaming death which was being dealt them. But there were few places for them to go, there was such a hard press of their fellows together. The armies of Sauron fell into chaos on the other side of the gate as soldiers disregarded their commanders and warchiefs and began to fight and claw against each other to get away.
In the middle of the chaos, a few olog commanders of the enemy came to their senses enough to call on the archers in their companies. They shot flights of flaming arrows into the sky at Narnia's flying troops and the young dragons who aided them, and the skies became a lethal minefield for those who continued their assaults on Sauron's forces. The skyborne attackers drew higher to avoid the arrows, but even still not all could climb fast enough and Sir Eric watched as many of Fleetfeather's fellows were dropped out of the sky. The griffin and he returned for more armaments from the dwarven wagons repeatedly in a great circuit, each time seeing fewer of their comrades doing the same.
But the vast orc army which had been brought to bear against the Narnians for the sake of recovering the second ring of power were being torn apart from the skies and from within.
On the last circuit he made, there were none of the dwarven munitions left to take. They had all been expended. Remembering his orders from the high king, he and Fleetfeather then raced north and west to try and find the ringbearers and ensure their safety. They flew far and fast back towards Cirith Ungol where they had first seen the two little hobbits from the sky.
The fields of orcs between the Spider's Cleft and the ever burning mountain which had previously occupied those spaces in the volcanic landscape had emptied out that the knight could see as they flew onwards. From that height they could see no one, no movement of any kind. Circling and flying towards the peak of Mt. Doom they continued their search.
"Could they have been captured?!" Fleetfeather asked with concern, seeing no one.
"Let's hope not!" Sir Eric answered. "No! I think that if the dark lord had his prize, we would know it and the battle would be turned harder against us than what it now is!"
After flying back and forth along their course, circling for some time, Fleetfeather then shouted, "I think I see them!"
The griffin flew towards a barely discernible stone path up the hellish mountain's side which terminated in a stone archway carved into the rock face. Sir Eric strained his eyes to see them, but thee they were, two little ones making their way up the mountainside, slowly but steadily.
"I don't believe it!" Sir Eric exclaimed in amazement. "Never will I ever laugh at the stories of the little people from the north again! These may look to be made of soft and weak things, but inside they are all steel and resolve! I should be so lucky as to call one friend!"
"Should we land and give them aid?!" Fleetfeather asked.
Watching the two hobbits, Sir Eric shook his head. "I don't think they need our help, and doing so might draw unwanted attention from the Eye which burns from Barad-dur! Let them be for now until they reach their goal! We know where they are, and can send aid to them once the ring is destroyed!"
Just then, they heard a thunder of war horns to the north. Satisfied that the ringbearers were in no immediate danger, they flew in the direction of the ominous sound. Within minutes they discovered the source. Behind the Black Gate stood the remainder of Sauron's armies, easily sixty thousand strong. Before the Gate stood the army which they had seen march from Gondor the day before, no more than six thousand that Sir Eric could guess. An old man with long hoary white beard and hair dressed in white robes and carrying a staff rode towards the front and next to the same kingly man on a white horse Fleetfeather had seen before. He wore…
No, it can't be, but it certainly looks to be The knight thought to himself as he recognized the ancient armor, banners, and livery of the White Tree and seven stars, the sigils of the King of Gondor. And what sword does he raise aloft and taunt the forces at the Black Gate with? Has Isildur's heir truly been found? Does he return only at this moment to ride against the armies of hell itself?
The next thing he saw was the hated entry into Mordor opening its massive doors, and the wide host of Sauron descending en masse upon the armies of men.
"We have to help them!" Sir Eric cried. "Turn, Fleetfeather, fly back to the Narnians, perhaps they might send what aid in griffins and eagles they have left to them!"