Leaving the kingdom of Laurenandë behind them, the silhouettes of the expedition faded once more into the wilderness, and their long road began again. For more than twenty days they trudged through empty lands and broken hills, and in all that time no foe troubled their path.
By the markings on Saruman's old map, they now lay less than ten days from the Great Port of Lond Daer.
That evening, when they had ended their day's march, they made camp beside a riverbank.
Legolas's silver boots sank silently into the muddy shore. His keen Elven ears twitched now and then, listening for the faintest change in the voice of the wind. Suddenly he halted. His longbow was strung and an arrow set to the string in the space of a breath. "The current is swifter," he said. "Something is stirring the water."
At his words Gandalf stepped forward and knelt, trailing his fingertips in the stream. A biting chill ran up through his hand.
"This is no natural flow," he said quietly. "Darkness is fouling the water."
He lifted his head and peered across to the far bank. The trees there had turned a strange purple-black, their leaves curled like claws.
Gimli swung his newly forged star-iron axe up onto his shoulder. The star-sapphires in the blade gleamed faintly even under the heavy sky. "Whatever it is," he grunted, "I will cleave it first and ask questions after."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than the thickets on the far bank exploded outward. A swarm of black shapes burst forth and came racing toward the river.
One of them roared and leaped first, brandishing a war-blade and making straight for Aragorn.
Denethor moved like a drawn bowstring. His sword flashed free, the steel cutting a hard pale arc through the dim light. The dark attacker dropped with a single stroke and rolled lifeless on the stones. Only then did they see clearly what it was.
Denethor's face changed. At a glance he knew the creature's kind. "Red-eye Orcs of Mordor," he said sharply. "Sauron has sent his own guard."
Gondor had stood facing Mordor for so many years that the dark spawn of that land were as familiar to its captains as their own armour.
These Orcs were half a head taller than the rabble they had fought in the Gap of Stone-teeth. Their eyes burned a raw crimson, their skin gleamed like tar, and the curved blades in their hands had been quenched in some greenish venom. Drool dripped constantly from their mouths and wherever it fell upon the ground it ate small black pits into the soil.
"Fight! Fight!"
"Protect the seeds!"
Gandalf's shout rang out, and the company sprang to arms. Steel met the charge of the Red-eye Orcs and battle was joined on the muddy bank.
The howls of the black-blooded creatures shook the air. They sent flights of poisoned arrows hissing toward them. The shafts that the companions struck from the sky buried themselves in the soil, which answered with a sinister sizzling as the venom gnawed at it.
Legolas's silver arrows blazed out like meteors, each shaft driving precisely into an Orc's eye socket. The white fletching turned black in a heartbeat where it brushed the poison.
"Not only these," Aragorn shouted suddenly. He pointed toward the eastern wastes, where five long, dark shapes were racing low over the ground. Grass and shrubs withered in their wake, and the air itself seemed to grow thick with a suffocating dread.
"The Nazgûl," Gandalf said, his face hardening like iron. The light of his staff flared bright, and the Ring of Fire on his hand burst into red. A wave of flame gathered before him and rolled forward across the field.
The Ringwraiths screamed, a thin, piercing cry. Darkness boiled about them, wrapping their forms in a shroud of shadow, and through that mantle they passed unharmed across Gandalf's wall of fire.
They came to ground about a hundred paces before the company. As the black vapour swirled away from them, tall forms appeared, cloaked in tattered black.
They had no true bodies. Beneath the cloaks there was only churning shadow, and in their hands they held long swords corroded and dull. White frost gathered thick upon the rusted blades in the damp night air.
"Not the Witch-king," Gandalf muttered, "nor that old Khamûl. These are others, but stronger than before. Sauron has fed them with the power that came of Morgoth. We must not meet them blow for blow."
As he spoke, the leftmost of the Nazgûl lifted its hooded head. Two pinpoints of red glimmered faintly where its eyes should have been.
It raised its sword and pointed the tip at the bundle held against Denethor's breast. When it spoke, its voice was rough and grating, like metal scraping on stone.
"Light… dark…"
All five Ringwraiths moved in the same instant.
The ground beneath their feet froze at once. Spikes of ice thrust up like spears toward the company, while the black-blooded Orcs splashed into the river, wading across in the confusion.
"Legolas, cut their cloak-fastenings!" Aragorn cried, his sword hacking aside the spears of ice. "The forms of these new wraiths are not yet stable."
The Elven prince's archery shone brightest in that desperate moment. Three silver arrows flew with a spinning gust, each one shearing clean through the ties that held a Nazgûl's cloak.
As the robes slipped loose, the shadows beneath surged like a black tide and shrieked in pain. Their next blow came slower, the rhythm of their assault marred.
Gimli's new axe carved a bright arc and split the skull of a charging Orc right down the center.
Where the star-sapphires touched the streaming black blood, light exploded. The Red-eye Orc's head flew free and tumbled into the river. Gimli laughed aloud. "Now this is an axe worth the forging," he roared. "Better than any quenched hammer from a Dwarf-smith's forge."
Denethor, keeping his body between the seeds and the enemy, fought as he fell back. Splashes of poisoned blood were already dotted across his armour. The metal was pitted with a hundred tiny holes where the venom had eaten into it.
Knowing they could not stand and trade blows forever, he snatched a look about them. At last he pointed upstream and shouted, "There, a slope of broken stone. The ground there will hinder any riders."
By now Gandalf had fully engaged the wraiths. His staff swept in a shining arc, and a crescent blade of light cleaved through two of their shadow-bodies. Step by step he yielded ground, chanting an ancient banishing spell.
"In the holy name of Ilúvatar, be gone."
Where the light-blade passed, shadow scattered like smoke in a gust, but almost at once it flowed together again.
"They cannot be slain," Legolas called, loosing his last silver arrow to pin itself deep into the ghostly form of one Nazgûl. "Only driven back for a while."
By the time the five reached the foot of the stony slope, the Red-eye Orcs were already at their heels, and the freezing spell of the Nazgûl had laid a thin crust of ice over the rocks, making every loose stone slick and treacherous.
Aragorn halted suddenly and thrust the point of his sword deep into a crack in the stone. "Gandalf," he said, "take them and go. I will hold the rear."
"You alone…" Denethor began, but Gandalf's hand came down hard upon his shoulder.
"He bears the blood of Isildur," the wizard said, his eyes unshakeable. "For a time he can hold the wraiths at bay. We meet at the top. Go."
Aragorn wrenched his sword free and turned to face the oncoming Nazgûl. The golden light that poured along the blade drove the shadows a half-step back.
Now his hand no longer trembled on the hilt.
"Come on, then," he roared. His shout rang with the buried majesty of Númenor's kings, and that ancient authority struck at the dark things before him.
With a wild cry he waded back into the press of Red-eye Orcs. Man and sword together moved like one thing among the broken stones. In his mind the teachings of Kaen rang clear:
To flee is to let the darkness grow bold; to stand is to make the darkness afraid.
As the five Nazgûl drew in upon him, Aragorn's heart grew still. In that stillness he began to pray, simple and earnest.
"Lord Kaen," he whispered inwardly, "give me strength. Whether you hear me or not, grant me your strength."
At first he had only meant to steady himself, to borrow courage from the memory of Kaen's tall figure. This was, after all, his first time standing alone before five foes stronger than himself.
But something happened that Aragorn had never expected.
A pale golden light kindled suddenly about his body. A voice, stern and majestic, sounded in his mind.
"If your heart is true, I will answer."
Doubt fell away. He knew then that his call had been heard. He lifted his sword and shouted to the enemies before him, "Come, hounds of Sauron, and taste the wrath of the Dúnedain!"
...
By the time Gandalf and the other three scrambled higher up the broken slope, the sounds of Aragorn's battle rolled behind them, a harsh music of metal, Orc-cries and his own defiant shouts mingled together.
More than once Legolas tried to glance back, but each time the wizard's eyes forbade him.
"He will not fall," Gandalf said, his staff blazing as it cleared a path among the thorn-bushes. "Isildur's blood holds a natural sway against the Shadow. These new Nazgûl will not dare to press him too close."
Gimli panted heavily, frost clinging to the edge of his star-iron axe. "These stones are worse than the mine-steps of Moria," he grumbled. "If the wraiths catch us here…"
"Hush," Denethor cut in suddenly, laying a hand on his shoulder and tilting his head. "Listen. There is water ahead, but not the river's voice."
They slowed and moved on more warily. Pushing through a belt of low shrubs, they came out upon the edge of a wide marsh.
Grey-green water stretched before them, its surface scummed with mats of yellowing weed. Countless twisted stumps jutted up like dead fingers reaching toward the sky.
The air stank so strongly of rot that every breath was a labour.
"This is the corrupted marsh that Ingwion spoke of," Legolas said, frowning as he watched the sluggish water. "Something stirs beneath the surface."
Even as he spoke, the water just ahead swelled in a great bulge. Filthy mud spurted upward and a huge tail, plated in dark green scales, lashed out and shattered a cluster of stumps to splinters.
"Water-beasts," Gimli growled, lifting his axe. "And fouler by far than any lurking watcher in the deep."
The head of Gandalf's staff flared with a fierce white light, throwing the far reaches of the marsh into stark relief.
There in the depths they saw at least seven or eight shapes moving under the water, each monstrous in its own way. One had a jaw like a crocodile's, vast and tooth-filled; another bore a head crowded with many glittering eyes. Slimy mucus oozed from their skins, spreading in rainbow slicks across the dark surface.
"They have been twisted by dark power," Gandalf said quietly. "Once they were only common creatures of river and fen. Now they are Sauron's watch-dogs."