Chapter 348: Coercion
"Ringwraiths!"
Both of them spoke the name of the uninvited guests at once. Saruman's brows drew tight, and he immediately thrust the staff he had just snatched from Gandalf back into his hands.
Gandalf grabbed it and forced himself upright.
Hiss—
One of the Nazgûl's winged beasts screamed and dived at the tower.
"Begone!"
Saruman raised his staff and drove it back.
But there were more than one.
The other eight did not sit idle. They stooped together, trying to smash through Saruman's defences.
"And I am still here," Gandalf said.
Just as Saruman began to falter, he stepped forward and set a hand on the White Wizard's shoulder, taking on a share of the crushing weight.
Saruman blinked.
He had never found this maddening, hidebound Grey Wizard so pleasing to the eye.
"Filthy wretches! Today you will learn whose ground this is!" Saruman shouted up at the Ringwraiths.
Boom.
Thunder cracked overhead, shaking the air. A bolt of sickly green lightning leapt down ahead of the sound and struck the balcony, blasting both Saruman and Gandalf black and sprawling.
"Urgh—"
Gandalf coughed up a mouthful of smoke.
His thoughts turned, unbidden, to his visits at Roadside Keep. That had been comfort: safe, peaceful, easy on every bone.
Then he looked around Isengard.
Never in all his days had he been put through such misery.
For all that, Saruman was clearly not in much better shape. Leaning on his staff, he climbed to his feet.
"You see?" he said. "What did I tell you? Sauron's spirit is almost whole again. Even his lackeys strike with such force."
"If you had not insisted on dragging me back and wasting my strength, I would never have been brought to this."
"If you had told me of the Ring sooner, when it still might have come into my hands, the Nazgûl outside would be kneeling and calling me Master, not…"
He broke off.
The Witch-king of Angmar, Lord of Minas Morgul, was already laughing.
"Ha ha ha ha! Two broken-down wizards, and you think you can stand against us?" he cried.
"…not jeering at us from the sky," Saruman finished through his teeth, glaring up at them.
Gandalf could see that the White Wizard was no better than himself.
He was holding on by will alone.
If Gandalf prodded him once in the back with his staff, he would crumple on the spot.
"Say what you like. The two of us have no more chances today," Gandalf said, lying flat and strangely calm about his fate.
"But I am not worried. Not for our task, nor for the reckoning that is due to Sauron and his Ringwraiths."
He drew breath and went on,
"Because I know there are others who will avenge us, others who will guard this land."
"In that case, what harm is there in dying?"
The sooner back to the West, the less trouble, really.
He took off the pipe from his staff, then remembered that Saruman had already smashed it.
Another sigh escaped him, heavy with regret.
Saruman still stared at the Nazgûl, listening in silence.
For a heartbeat, the cold eyes that were usually full of scorn and hunger for power grew a little still.
When the Ringwraiths moved again, he said suddenly,
"Since when does Gandalf the Grey, who so prides himself on giving folk hope, talk such defeatist nonsense?"
Thud.
The Nazgûl's charge broke on the tower's hidden wards once more. They slammed into an unseen barrier and failed to break through.
Saruman's breath hitched. When he had recovered a little, he turned, seized Gandalf's robe, and began dragging him across the floor towards the edge of the balcony.
"What are you doing, Saruman?" Gandalf demanded.
"Getting you out of my sight," Saruman said.
"What?"
Whack.
He swung his staff like a club, as though teeing off on a golf ball, and cracked Gandalf hard in the side, knocking him clean off the tower.
"Ahhhhh—!"
Gandalf screamed as he fell.
Partway down, a vast force caught him up, as weighty as the stars. It was neither wholly light nor wholly dark. There was a streak of savagery in it that he could feel but not name. It dragged him aside and bore him away from Isengard at furious speed.
All the way to the Gap of Rohan.
Plop.
When it was done, Saruman at last could not hold himself. He collapsed on the floor.
The defences of Orthanc failed utterly. The Nazgûl vanished from their winged beasts' backs. A breath of foul, dead air swept into the tower-top and snuffed every light.
Nine black shapes formed out of the dark, drew their long swords, and ringed the White Wizard.
Saruman's neck creaked as he turned his head, looking left and right. He tasted true despair.
At such times, an uninvited nuisance might almost have been welcome.
But miracles did not come on command.
"Come with us, wizard. The Master summons you," one of the Ringwraiths said, pressing cold steel to his throat.
There would be no running.
Saruman shut his eyes.
Under the cover of his robes, he slipped the Star Ring from his finger and let it fall. It made no sound. None of the Nazgûl noticed.
They took him and were gone.
…
"You look like a beggar," someone remarked.
In a fortress in western Rohan, Théoden had happened by and stopped short at the sight of Gandalf, blackened and battered.
Gandalf had no strength left to argue.
"The matter is grave, Théoden," he said. "Isengard has fallen to the Nazgûl. Saruman's fate is unknown. There are hordes of great Orcs, stronger and larger than others, in that place now. Where they stand, on whose side, is not clear. We must be wary."
Théoden's brow creased.
"The Nazgûl have flown brazenly over Rohan. The cries of those beasts they ride have filled my people with fear," he said.
"I was following them when I came here, never thinking that this was what had happened."
"That is gravely serious indeed," Théoden said.
He swung round and called to the marshal at his back, giving orders to watch Isengard closely.
When he had finished, he pointed at Gandalf.
"See that our wizard has a comfortable place to rest. He looks worn to the bone."
"No need," Gandalf said, shaking his head.
"If you would help me, give me a swift horse. I must find Levi."
"So be it," Théoden said.
"Choose as you will from our stables. Whichever you favour is yours to ride. I know you will treat it well."
"My thanks," Gandalf said.
He wasted no time on further courtesies, but went straight to the stalls.
Among the many idle horses, one stood out at a glance: a proud grey whose coat shone like silver in the sun and melted into shadow in the shade.
"What is his name?" Gandalf asked.
"Shadowfax," the stableman said. "Truth be told, he is the finest horse in Rohan, the best of all our stock—a king among horses, lord of all this age's herds. But I must warn you: he may be swift—swifter even than the steeds of Roadside Keep—but his temper is fierce. No one has ever managed to ride him."
"As I said, a king does not lightly bow his head."
"That is well. I will take him," Gandalf said, and stepped forward to mount.
Shadowfax kicked him for his trouble, and he came away with another bruise on his face.
"Good. Very good. Temper enough indeed," Gandalf muttered. "But that will not stop me."
If the king of horses had a temper, did the old wizard not have one too?
Shadowfax more than earned his title as lord of horses. Once Gandalf finally mastered him, the great horse carried the wizard from Rohan to Roadside Keep in only four days.
By the time they reached the fortress, a week had gone by.
The missing three days were the time Gandalf had spent wrestling with him. Rohan's greatest horse was as hard to break as his fame suggested. Poor Gandalf had been thrown and sent running more times than he could count, chasing the stallion over the plains for three full days before he tamed him and won a seat on his back.
And then…
Roadside Keep.
Shadowfax stood blowing hard, ignoring Leaflock's gaze from above as he tore at the grass and drank from the pool.
At the gate, Levi took in Gandalf's smoke-blackened face, the tattered robe hanging in rags, the bruises and scrapes all over him, and could not help saying,
"Did Mordor have you down the pits digging coal?"