Whenever the Elves weave a person or a deed into their songs, the tale swiftly spreads across the vast lands of Middle-earth.
For the wandering winds carry the fair, melodious voices of the Elves to the ears of every race that can understand their speech.
Clang!
At noon, when the Dragonborn, who had been drilled all morning, went to the kitchen for his midday meal, the head cook, already apprised of the morning’s affairs, slammed a heaping platter of honey-roasted salted pork down before him.
Accompanied by cheese, juice, and sausages, the heavy plate sent the cutlery clattering noisily.
The black-haired Dragonborn’s eyelid twitched; he could not shake the feeling that he was being singled out.
Yet the moment he caught the dangerous glint in the cook’s eye, he wisely chose to feign ignorance.
After all, quarreling with an Elf is a fool’s errand.
They have an eternity to hold a grudge, why invite that?
Lowering his head, the Dragonborn picked up his knife and fork and tucked into his meal.
“Fena, the salted pork is excellent today.
Shall we have it again for supper?” The Elves seated at the same table let out good-natured laughter.
One of the gate guards jested, “Mestors, an Elf may have but one spouse in a lifetime.
You must choose with care.” Thunk!
A sharp arrow pierced the wine cup in the guard’s hand and embedded itself in the solid oak table, its white fletchings quivering.
The Elf, likely of Noldorin lineage, stared dumbly at the mead slowly dripping from his wooden cup, his heart aching at the waste.
However, once he saw who had loosed the arrow, he swiftly cast aside his cup, finished the food on his plate in a few quick bites, and said with impeccable courtesy, “May your appetite ever be so hearty.
Good afternoon, my friend.” With a restrained nod to the Dragonborn, he fled the kitchen like the wind.
The Dragonborn grew even more uneasy.
He could feel someone’s gaze roaming between his neck and his back, and he scarcely dared to breathe.
The other Elves, wearing expressions of wry amusement, likewise hastily cleared their plates, nodded in farewell, and slipped away one by one.
“Fena.” Though he could not fathom why a cook would be carrying a bow and arrows (she had none yesterday), the Dragonborn, with heartfelt if clumsy and poorly accented Elvish, said, “I meant to say yesterday, your archery is formidable.
Would you teach me?” He turned to look behind him, striving to fill his gaze with sincerity, though how a pair of reptilian, slit-pupiled eyes could ever express sincerity, he had no notion.
At the kitchen doorway, the she-elf, who had been standing with bow drawn and aimed, let her expression soften.
Outside, the merry laughter of the Elves drifted in from afar.
Thus passed a brief interlude between the Dragonborn and the Elves.
All too soon, the Elves’ last days of merriment gave way to ever less welcome tidings brought back by the scouts, turning that time into a treasured memory many would later recall.
“…When the last great star of the Valacirca hung high in the river of the heavens, we crossed the Great River and rode north along the Hills of Twilight… “The further north we pressed, the heavier the brooding dread became.
The horses snorted uneasily, and birds had all but vanished… Along the way, we sighted not a single village of the Northmen who once dwelt in those lands.
It was as though they had sensed the return of evil even before the Men of the South or the Elves… “Another day dawned, and we pressed farther north… Today we passed beyond the Hills of Twilight and entered the Ettenmoors!
Here the land was even more deserted.
We searched every likely place, yet found not even a young beast.
A terrible, oppressive darkness hung over the northern country.
Ah!
The sky in the north seemed veiled by black clouds!
…This is an omen of great ill!
We resolved to press on northward.
A heavy foreboding weighed upon our hearts, yet I deemed that the goal of our errand most likely lay in the north… Yea, we all know what dwells there!” By the time the Master of the Grey Havens read this, the script had grown hasty and wild.
It was plain that the writer had been seized by great fear.
Círdan’s face grew grave, for he knew well what lurked in the North.
He continued leafing through the increasingly disordered and scrawled dispatches, precious tidings that the forward scouts had managed to send back only after finding a snowy owl and promising it a great many hazelnuts before it consented to bear the message.
“…At great peril, we rode eastward many leagues, and at last we came upon the object of our search!!” The Master of the Grey Havens’ expression darkened further.
He swiftly rifled through the latest scribbled reports, heaped together, until he found what he sought.
“Carn Dûm!
The great northern stronghold of the Shadow in the East, the ancient capital of the Witch-king of Angmar!
It has arisen anew!
…Wargs, Orc-wargs!
The enemy’s scouts spotted us at the same moment, and we had no choice but to turn and fight!
“May the light of Elbereth never fade!
The skirmish was soon over.
We struck hard while they were still disordered, dealt a blow to their spirits, and won the field!
Yet the main host of the enemy has been roused!” At this point, Círdan could scarcely make out the writing.
The strokes were wild and reckless, the ink blotted in great drops, all betraying the sheer panic of the writer.
“It is a fell host of ancient demons and black Orcs out of Mordor…” Círdan strained to decipher the script, reading word by word as though chewing on tough meat.
“We caught but one glimpse from afar, and our hearts were nearly stolen away!
Such a terrible host has not been seen in Middle-earth since the Dark Years.
“The sky grows dark and dreadful at their approach, thick with black clouds and lightning.
Beneath that pall, fell wolves run at their heels, foul bats wheel overhead, and ghastly howls echo across the wastes!” Reading this, even the Master of the Grey Havens, who had endured countless bitter and harrowing battles through the First, Second, and Third Ages, felt his eyes widen, as though he himself beheld the dreadful sight the scouts described.
In his mind’s eye, countless evil creatures, fell and bloodthirsty, threw back their heads and howled, surging towards him like a tide.
Gritting his teeth, he read on.
“…The host is led by a pale Orc, cunning and hideous.
By its banners, it is likely one of the great Orcs from Gundabad.
The most infamous of their kind was Azog the Defiler, who in the year 2799 of the Third Age slew Thrór I (grandfather of Thorin Oakenshield) when he sought to reclaim the ancient dwarf-realm of the Mines of Moria.
Yet Azog was slain by Dáin II…” Here, Círdan found the script growing still wilder.
For the last few words, he had to bring the parchment close to his face, studying it minutely, and even then could only guess at the meaning.
“…The pale Orc sent wave after wave of wargs against us… We were forced to flee, never daring to look back, hoping to return home before the foul minions overtook us.
“Galdor, Grey Havens, written in the summer of the 2931st year of the Third Age.” Círdan drew a deep breath, carefully tucked away the precious dispatches, and steadied his heart before calling out, “Summon the watch!
Sound the alarm!” Dire though the tidings were, at least now they knew who the foe was, rather than groping in the dark.
Carn Dûm, the greatest northern lair of the Shadow in the East, the dark stronghold of the Witch-king of Angmar, chief of the Nine, had risen once more.
Círdan clenched his fist and looked grimly towards the Blue Mountains.
Mithrandir, may your plan succeed… Soon the great bronze bell in the highest tower of the Grey Havens was tolling.
The Elves, long prepared, cast aside whatever they were doing and swiftly gathered at the posts assigned to them days before.
“So it comes at last,” murmured the black-haired Dragonborn.
He stood on the eastern side of the Grey Havens, facing the mouth of the River Lhûn, clad in heavy armor and bearing a war-hammer.
It was a suit of armor so exquisite that even the most skilled Dwarven masters would stare in wonder and praise loudly.
The whole armor shone silver, for the Elven smiths who forged it had used Ithilnaur, a metal worked only by the Elves.
Beneath the great pauldrons, the Dragonborn’s demigod-like towering frame was encased in a breastplate wrought in the Elven manner, both fair and strong.
Upon it, a golden image of the Holy Tree was rendered with breathtaking life.
Every vein and leaf was formed by fusing Ithilnaur with threads of gold, painstakingly inlaid so that in sunlight it gleamed with a soft golden light.
Under the dim moonlight, the armor glowed with a faint silver sheen.
Nor was that all.
The Elves had set three lozenge-shaped sapphires, one large and two smaller, as ornaments upon the breastplate, just above the heart and below the throat, at the crown of the golden tree.
This rendered the armor extravagantly magnificent.
Moreover, the Dragonborn’s arms, thighs, shins, and feet were all sheathed in thick plates of armor, so that not only Orcs, but even the most skilful Elven archer would find it a daunting task to pierce the finely wrought defense and harm him.
Clang.
The Dragonborn set the great war-hammer on the ground, leaned it against the white wall on the eastern side of the Grey Havens, and gazed into the distance.
His blue cloak billowed behind him.
Around him, hundreds of Elves arrayed for battle, all in helms and harness, could not help but glance sidelong.
In the waning light of sunset, the Dragonborn’s colossal, almost holy form, towering nearly nine feet high, with its brutal majesty, seemed to grow mountainous and sublime.
So much so that the Elves seemed to see in him the likeness of Tulkas, the mightiest in battle among the Valar, the warrior-champion of Arda.
The Dragonborn was no fool.
He knew his skill at arms would not soon surpass others (the she-elf training him declared that he was flattering himself, and that his skill was but a hair better than a cook who had just picked up a cleaver).
Thus, after two days of training, he made a strange request of the Master of the Grey Havens.
He asked the Elven-king of the North to forge him the sturdiest possible suit of armor, with no heed to weight, and for weapons, he forsook the longswords and blades common in Middle-earth, instead choosing a war-hammer such as the Dwarves wield, one of truly staggering heft.
Lacking agility, he would become an armoured turtle, stacking defenses to the utmost.
When his foe, like a hedgehog gnawing a tortoise, found no place to strike, he would crush him with one blow of the hammer.
In the end, not only Círdan, but even Elirwen and Fena stared in disbelief at the contraption he finally cobbled together.
Thanks to his dragon blood, the Dragonborn’s strength was prodigious.
Thus, by choosing heavy armor and a massive hammer, he successfully concealed his weaknesses and amplified his strengths to the utmost.
Others might fear that weight would hinder their speed, but a few hundred pounds, even a thousand, was to him a mere trifle.
Moreover, choosing the simplest, most straightforward weapon, the war-hammer, spared him the embarrassment of wielding a blade with no skill, flailing about wildly.
With a hammer, it is simple: if a foe displeases you, one good swing will flatten even an iron-clad knight.
Miss with one swing?
Then swing again.
My defense is stout, and my stamina is boundless.
No matter how agile you are, you cannot dodge forever.
Truth be told, the Dragonborn was a greenhorn on the battlefield.
He chose the thickest armor to avoid being hit, and as for the hammer, well, if he could not wield a sword, he could at least crush heads like a man swatting moles.
Beside the Dragonborn, who indeed looked as though he had donned a turtle’s shell, stood Círdan, himself clad in splendid armor.
He too gazed into the distance.
“See there!
Are those not our scouts, riding hard?
They have outrun the dark host, brought us timely word, and reached the Grey Havens before the pale Orc could catch them.
They are our heroes!
“Let us greet the return of our brave messengers with the greatest joy and cheers!” Then Círdan called out a phrase in the ancient tongue of Quenya, which filled the hearts of all free and good people with battle-ardor and courage: “Arta!” The Elves answered with one voice, straightening their already erect frames even more.
Behind them, the war-banners of the Northern Elves snapped in the rising sea wind.
As though they had heard the cheers of their kin, the scouts’ noble steeds quickened their pace.
At last, ere the final gleam of sunset vanished, the riders thundered across the River Lhûn and came straight for the Grey Havens.
Like a whirlwind, they passed through the great gate and safely reached their beloved home.
And behind them, the dark clouds massed ever lower and more menacing.
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