Dragon fire.
A flame imbued with magic, kindled deep within a dragon’s belly and then loosed from its jaws, hot enough to melt iron and turn gold to molten slag.
A weapon of ruin, a sorcery of annihilation.
Since Glaurung, the first dragon of Middle-earth, was bred by the Dark Enemy Morgoth, the Elves of Middle-earth have suffered greatly from such fire.
Most infamous were the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame, in the year 455 of the First Age, and the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in 472.
In both battles, Glaurung’s fearsome dragon-flame inflicted unthinkable carnage upon the hosts of Elves, Men, and Dwarves.
Many heroes of those races perished in the dragon’s maw.
From that time onward, all the Free Peoples of Middle-earth imprinted the terror of dragon-fire deep in their memory.
Now, the Elves, following the bidding of Ulmo, Lord of Waters and King of the Sea, had brought back a sky-fallen man, a little fellow who called himself Dragonborn, and lo, he breathed dragon flame like a dragon.
Every Elf present stood frozen in shock.
As one, they sheathed their blades, reformed their ranks, and paying no heed to the fleeing wolves, drew back several paces to escape the dreadful fire.
The flames blazed and danced, no common fire: at first slender as an arm, but as the Dragonborn exhaled, they swiftly swelled into a towering inferno, surging mightily over a hundred yards.
It was a spectacle of awe.
Countless ferocious giant wolves that had been so savage moments before could not even flee; they were swept up in the terrible fire, their pelts, flesh, and bones consumed in the roaring dragon-flame until they crumbled into heaps of ash.
Howls rose as the remaining wolves yelped like beaten curs, tails tucked, fleeing headlong.
But the Dragonborn turned in wrath, and the dragon-flame followed like a shadow.
Beneath that dreadful power, hundreds more wolves were unmade, flesh and bone seared away into ash.
Bolg’s heart nearly burst with terror.
He had never imagined that the giant before him could be so dreadful.
That was a dragon’s roar and dragon-fire!
He was no pointy-eared Elf—stinking Elves had no such power… He was a star fallen from the sky!
He was the Dragonborn!
Bolg the Orc lashed his giant wolf frantically, not daring to look back, fearful that the fire-breathing creature would pursue.
Dark Lord above!
the towering, burly Orc cried in his mind.
How could such a fearsome being walk this earth?
How was he to report this to the merciless Defiler?
Remembering Azog the Defiler’s grim face before they set out, Bolg, who had fled at the first sign of trouble, decided not to return directly to the eastern battlefield.
Instead, he turned aside, took a hidden path, and made for Dol Guldur in the east.
A few Mordor black Uruks who had escaped on wargs followed him.
On the plain stretching from Mithlond to the Tower Hills, Emyn Beraid, all was now a sea of hellfire, reeking of char and roasting flesh.
The Elves watched with fear and hesitation in their eyes.
But at last they calmed themselves.
They had seen the Dragonborn cradling Ílwen in his grief, and how for his companion’s sake he had fought with reckless courage, heedless of his own life.
They knew then that he possessed a noble heart, and was no base wretch like the Pale Orc… At length, the last of the wolves, tails tucked, fled yelping from the black-haired Dragonborn’s sight, and reason returned to Dragonborn.
Dazed, he blinked, then forced himself to shut his mouth, and the terrifying flame vanished instantly.
“Cough, cough.” The newly minted fire-drake… Dragonborn hacked uncomfortably, and stray sparks flew from his lips, making him clamp his mouth shut in alarm.
Clearly, like his Shouts, he had yet to master this new power.
Indeed, he was as bewildered as anyone by the sudden acquisition of a dragon’s fiery breath.
All he remembered was that after the Elf maiden fell, he had sunk into deep remorse and wrath.
Blinded by rage, he had plunged alone into the wolf pack and begun a mad slaughter.
And as the frenzy mounted, his heart beat faster and harder until he felt his whole body ignite, a fierce compulsion screaming to be unleashed.
Just then, a huge burly Orc had ambushed him, giving him a fright.
By luck, the Orc’s black arrow struck the nose-guard of his master-forged Elven helm and was stopped.
Recovering, Dragonborn’s fury redoubled.
He poured out all his inner fire mixed with that surging power—and to his own astonishment, the moment that wrathful torrent met the open air, it transformed into flames.
In that instant, Dragonborn himself was dumbfounded.
Plainly, this was another blessing from the Most Holy Ilúvatar.
Yet he could not deny a savage satisfaction as he watched his enemies crumble to ash under his wrath.
Ílwen, I will send more Orcs to join you in death.
May you see it from the Halls of Mandos.
The Elves, seeing his awkward, almost endearingly clumsy display, warmed toward him further.
A tall, fair male Elf, clearly the leader of this company, came forward.
“You are full of surprises, Ocriannim,” said the Sinda Elf who had warned him before.
The Elf’s grey eyes followed the black-haired Dragonborn’s gaze to the reeking wolf carcasses and mounds of greasy ash scattered across the ground; his expression carried sorrow and a trace of dread.
“You remind me of the Dragons of old, though they were evil.” He returned his gaze to the Dragonborn’s eyes, dragon’s eyes, now.
“But I think this time, the Dragon’s wrath is on our side, is it not?” The black-haired Dragonborn blinked his golden, slit-pupiled eyes and said nothing.
Was he being aloof?
No, Dragonborn simply had not understood the Elven tongue.
On the eastern main battlefield, as the intimidating effect of the Dragon Shout faded, the Orcs grew more frantic.
They realized that the howling of the Wolf-king had ceased entirely.
None knew what had happened, but it boded no good.
To the south, the sky glowed a deep crimson, as if something vast were ablaze.
Yet to their knowledge, wolves did not wield fire… Moreover, the Elven line seemed unbreakable.
Every time they gained the white walls of the pointy-ears, the accursed, fearsome Elves stubbornly hurled the great Orc host back again.
A merciless, grinding slaughter of a wall-fight beyond all imagining repeated itself along the long defensive line.
Gradually, the violent yet cowardly hearts of these fallen creatures were overcome by dread.
They broke.
As another batch of Orc corpses was cast down from the holy white walls of the Grey Havens, the Orcs below suddenly dropped their weapons and fled.
They shrieked mindlessly, screaming in terror, their pre-battle courage utterly spent.
They wanted only to escape this hellish, blood-soaked field, to fight no more against pointy-ears who seemed an endless tide.
So desperate were they that they crashed headlong into the ordered ranks of the Orc companies that still held their formation.
Azog was livid.
These routing cowards threw the last ten companies, which had been intact, into disorder.
“Hold your ground!
You gutless curs, get back to your positions!
The stinking Elves are nearly spent, you fools…” But no matter how furiously he blew the horn, the broken Orcs at the front acted as though they were deaf, bent only on flight.
Their panic even infected the still-formed ten companies.
The remaining Orcs looked at one another in confusion, uncertain whether to advance or join the rout.
Azog made a swift decision.
He roared to the thousand-strong warg-riders who had stayed at his side: “Warg-riders, kill every coward who dares to flee!” The hulking black Uruks mounted on giant wargs spurred their beasts, cutting into the flanks of the intact formations.
Wielding jagged maces and cruel whips, they stove in the skulls of fleeing Orcs, bellowing in the Black Speech of Mordor: “Hold the line, hold the line!
Any who waver shall be consumed by the Master’s boundless wrath!
Level your spears, I said, level your spears and slaughter any who dare to disrupt the line!
This is the Defiler’s command!” Cowed, the wavering Orcs steadied themselves.
They leveled their long black iron spears and kept their craven kin at bay.
“Back!” they snarled at the routers.
“The Defiler bids you go back to the assault!” But the terrified broken soldiers, wide-eyed and weaponless, only shoved at the bristling spear-line as though their own kind were gentler than the Elven arrows on the walls.
“Run, you fools, the stinking Elves are sallying out!” “Ah, an arrow in my arse!
Stinking Elf, stinking Elf shot my arse…” “Such a dreadful sound!
Grimash’s ears have been deafened by that awful noise.
Stinking Elves, stinking Elves have a terrible voice-monster that will eat Grimash’s ears, eat Grimash’s eyes, eat Grimash’s heart!
No, Grimash won’t face such a dreadful foe.
Grimash will run, yes, run… Hey, you stupid lot, make way for Lord Grimash!
You’re blocking Lord Grimash!” screeched a filthy, one-eyed runt of an Orc.
But beside the fearsome black Uruk warg-riders of the Defiler, these routiers, most of whom had cast aside their weapons to run, were soft as fresh-baked white bread.
So the intact companies, gritting their teeth under the cold-eyed watch of the black Uruks, leveled their long iron spears and thrust home.
Scores of the fleeing Orcs were skewered like meat on spits.
“Back!” they roared, and the formation advanced.
“Get back to the assault, you idiots!” The fleeing Orcs had not expected such ruthless betrayal from their own kind.
Lord Grimash and the rest scrambled backward in terror and dismay, looking utterly wronged and pitiful.
Up on the walls, Gelmir and the surviving Elves leaned on their swords, speechless at the absurd infighting below.
“This is our chance!” Gelmir said to Círdan, who had at last come to the eastern front.
“If we sally now, the Orcs will be routed completely.
They are ever thus: belligerent yet cowardly, faithless at the scent of gain.
Their nature cannot be changed.” The Lord of the Grey Havens, however, studied the Orc lines intently and then gazed toward the northern mountains.
“Wait a little longer,” he said.
“Wait just a little longer.” Behind the holy white walls, a disciplined, expressionless company of elite cavalry waited motionlessly, ready to strike.
In the Blue Mountains, at a hidden pass, Thorin Oakenshield lifted his head sharply.
“What is that sound?” he asked tautly.
“I thought I heard a dragon’s roar.
But that is impossible, how could there be a dragon in the North?” Dwalin, nearly encased in a suit of iron, rumbled from within his helm, “Smaug is the last known Fire-drake.
There should be no other dragons…” “But!” Fíli, the second heir of Durin’s line, rode up in heavy armor emblazoned with the royal device, a war-axe in hand, seated astride a sturdy ram.
He peered about curiously and broke in, “Lately the ravens in the Blue Mountains have been chattering about a dragon in the north, and a tall human, saying a dragon appeared by the River Lhûn.
I think it’s nonsense!” His words drew the gaze of both the Dwarf prince and Gandalf.
“What say you, Gandalf?
Have you ever seen a dragon?” Unlike the startled Dwarf prince, the Grey Wizard, mounted on a tall brown horse with staff and pipe, gave a rather awkward cough, and white smoke puffed comically from his mouth, nose, and ears.
They were now marching along the swiftest pass from the Blue Mountains to the Mouths of the Lhûn, with an unending column of Dwarf soldiery behind them.
“Smaug was not the last dragon, not as I know it,” said the Grey Wizard, eyeing the endless Dwarf host with some haste and carefully avoiding Thorin’s and Fíli’s eyes.
“There are still many dragons north of the Grey Mountains.
Smaug was merely the greatest of them… By ‘many,’ I mean fewer than ten, of course.” The Dwarves were indeed captivated by this “shocking revelation.” All, including Thorin, stared at him in astonishment, the dragon-shout quite forgotten.
“So many dragons still live in the world?
I thought dragons were only legends…” Fíli, who had been born in the Blue Mountains, spoke eagerly; young as he was, dragons and adventure thrilled him.
Thorin shot him a stern glare.
“Dragons are no legend.
They are living, breathing villains that devoured our homeland and our kin!
Murderers, gold-mad demons, the sworn foes of all Dwarves!
Do not treat this lightly, it is no jest.” Fíli clearly feared his uncle greatly; he ducked his head and fell silent.
But soon he looked up again and asked Gandalf, “Wizard, are there five of you in total…?” Now it was Gandalf’s turn to feel a headache coming on.
Thankfully, the Dwarves soon emerged from the pass, and before them lay the grim, raging battlefield of the Grey Havens.
“Thorin!” Gandalf promptly abandoned the restless young Dwarf and urged his horse to the prince, who had been preoccupied since they set out.
“Have the Dwarves cross the river at once!
The Elves have drawn off the bulk of the Orcs.
If the Dwarves strike their weak rear line, we shall sweep the field and win the day!” The Dwarf prince stood upon a war chariot drawn by eight sturdy rams, gazing out toward the bloody conflict at the Mouths of the Lhûn, his expression dark and unreadable.
Now unshielded by the towering Blue Mountains, Thorin could see the fire-reddened sky across the water and the shadowy darkness looming behind the Orc host.
He wavered.
The Grey Wizard’s evasions had not escaped the prince’s eye.
Clearly, the wizard was hiding something about that terrifying roar, and this only deepened the misgivings that had gnawed at Thorin throughout the rescue march.
“Thorin!” Gandalf grew desperate, unable to fathom the Dwarf’s sudden reluctance.
“Patience, Wizard,” Thorin Oakenshield said coldly.
Clad in heavy Dwarf-mail, war-hammer in hand, he bore a kingly authority.
“The Dwarves agreed to bring aid to these vexing Elves, and we shall not break our word.
But the moment we join battle is for me to decide!
Now, be silent, Wizard.
That is the prerogative of a king; you have no say in it!” His stubbornness nearly choked Gandalf with fury.
The wizard fretted, riding to and fro, his eyes constantly drawn to the distant battle.
There, Azog had at last finished restoring order, and the Orcs’ final, most savage assault was under way.
“Enough!” Seeing that the Orcs had committed even their last reserve, Thorin Oakenshield rose up with sudden resolve, thrusting all doubt aside.
Sword raised toward the Mouths of the Lhûn, the valiant Dwarf prince cried, “Cross the river!
Dwarves, the hour of decision is at hand!” ———————— Thank you all for reading and supporting this story, also do leave your comments, reviews, stones, especially paragraph comments, they are fun to read.
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