Chapter 393: A Fierce Battle
After several thousand Orcs had turned to ash, the charging host finally slowed to a stop.
The survivors in the front ranks stared at the wall of light with lingering terror. Their bodies edged back on instinct, afraid that one wrong step would see them crumble into ash just like the ones before them.
High above the army, the Witch-king of Angmar hovered on his fell beast, circling before that sky-piercing curtain. This barrier, raised by the combined power of every Auror present, was not something even he could cross with ease.
He lingered as if stymied, but the Head of the Auror Office did not relax for a second. He ordered everyone to stay sharp.
Sure enough, the next moment, the Witch-king began to chant.
The evil incantation rolled across heaven and earth, and the light itself seemed to dim. A tide of foul power gathered around him, making his presence feel even more dangerous, more suffocating.
Then black smoke poured from his body. Within it, countless twisted, malicious faces surfaced and vanished, as if innumerable evil spirits were trapped inside.
That thick smoke, heavy with omen and curse, screamed with piercing wails as it surged straight into the barrier.
Darkness slammed into silver-white brilliance.
The wall of light rippled in waves, trembling under the impact. On one side, smoke roared like a storm. On the other, the shining curtain held firm. Darkness and light clashed, sharply divided, locked in violent contest.
The Witch-king's assault intensified. The smoke struck again and again, relentless, determined to smash the shield apart.
But the Aurors were no weaklings. They cast in unison, reinforcing the barrier over and over. The ripples worsened, the strain obvious, yet the wall did not break.
As the struggle dragged into a stalemate, the Witch-king showed no impatience. Instead, a mocking coldness seeped into his gaze.
He raised his right hand, revealing the Ring of Power on his finger, and drove its strength into a darker art.
Ancient words of shadow echoed through the world. The sky dulled to a leaden gloom, as if night had fallen early.
That voice wormed into the Aurors' ears, repeating without end. It stirred agitation and unrest, tugging at buried fear and resentment, coaxing every negative thought to the surface.
What truly set the Aurors on edge was the ground itself.
It began to tremble, and a low, heavy hum rose from beneath their feet.
The shaking grew worse. Nearby slopes of the North Downs started to slide. Rocks tumbled. Soil churned and buckled.
Then the landslip tore open the mountainside and exposed what lay within, and every Auror drew a sharp breath.
Corpses.
Heaps upon heaps of bones and rotted remains, piled like hills beneath the earth. Soldiers who had died here long ago, men of Arthedain, and the invaders of Angmar who had slaughtered them.
When Arthedain fell to Angmar, blood had run like water, bodies stacked so high the North Downs earned their grim name, the Deadmen's Dike.
Now, under the Witch-king's call, those sleeping dead clawed their way back out of the soil.
The trembling ground was their work.
Cold witch-fire burned in their empty eye sockets as they rose behind the Aurors and surged forward in a mass, pressing in like a flood.
Faced with these corpses under the Witch-king's control, part of the Auror line had no choice but to turn, diverting their wands to meet the threat charging from the rear.
The corpse horde was not individually dangerous to trained Aurors, but the sheer number of them forced the Aurors to split their strength. In an instant, nearly half their power was tied down.
The Witch-king did not waste the opening.
As the Aurors' focus fractured, he drove the Ring of Power harder and unleashed his strongest Dark magic.
The wall of light shattered in an instant, bursting into fragments that scattered and faded away.
"Continue the attack!" he commanded, in Black Speech.
At his order, the Orc host howled and surged forward again. With the corpse horde pressing from behind, the Aurors were caught between two tides and quickly surrounded.
Even so, the Aurors showed no fear. Wands flashed, and each spell cut down dozens, sometimes hundreds, at once.
For a time, the ground around the Aurors became a slaughterhouse. Orcs and corpses fell in heaps, erased in waves.
The Witch-king, watching from above, remained utterly indifferent.
To him, Orcs and corpses were expendable. They were fuel, meant to grind down the Aurors' magic through sheer attrition.
As long as he could drain them dry, he did not care if every Orc on the field died.
And besides, the Orcs and corpses were not his only threats.
There were Trolls, and there were Barrow-wights.
The corpse horde was simply a mass of bones animated and directed by his sorcery, made to sap the Aurors' strength.
Barrow-wights were different.
They were possessed by evil spirits—bodies hard as steel, speed terrifying. A single scratch from a claw or weapon carried a curse. Without immediate treatment, the wounded would turn into Barrow-wights themselves, becoming the Witch-king's puppets.
Even Aurors had to handle them with care. They couldn't afford to let Barrow-wights get close.
The Aurors quickly understood the Witch-king's intent. Worse, when Orcs were cut down, some of them staggered back to their feet under his sorcery and threw themselves into the fight again.
That forced the Aurors to switch tactics, choosing spells that could destroy bone and body completely, leaving nothing to reanimate.
Following the principle of striking the leader first, the Head of the Auror Office led an elite group into the air on broomsticks. They moved together, surrounding the Witch-king and attacking as one.
A fierce battle erupted in the sky.
As the chief of the Nazgûl, the Witch-king was monstrously strong, steeped in sorcery. Even under the combined assault of dozens of Auror veterans, he still held a faint advantage.
Most of the Aurors' spells did nothing to him, even high-powered curses meant to destroy, like Reducto and Confringo. They simply could not harm him at all.
He was an evil spirit, akin in essence to a ghost. Physical force was meaningless, and the vast majority of magic had little effect on a Ringwraith.
Only light-aspected magic could truly restrain a creature of such darkness.
The Aurors adapted instantly. Seeing ordinary spells fail, they began to cast Expecto Patronum, summoning bright animal Patronuses that swept in to strike and harry the Witch-king.
The Patronuses could not truly injure him, but they did suppress him, pressing against his darkness and disrupting his movements.
With Patronuses constantly interfering at close range, the fight tipped into balance again. Neither side could decisively overwhelm the other.
Then, from far away, a dragon's roar shook the air.
At the sound, the Witch-king's eyes changed, filling with wary dread.
The Aurors, on the other hand, lit up with excitement and relief.
"Smaug is here!"
They pressed their attack harder, striking at the Witch-king and his forces with renewed ferocity.
Smaug's speed was terrifying. In the blink of an eye, he arrived above the battlefield.
His body, more than a thousand feet long, blotted out the sky when his wings spread wide. Each beat of those wings kicked up storm winds, and the raw force of dragon majesty rolled outward like a physical weight.
Smaug let out a thunderous roar and dove low over the Orcs and Barrow-wights. His chest swelled, glowing red from within.
The next instant, he unleashed a torrent of dragonfire.
The flames were so hot they could melt the hardest steel in moments. Wherever the fire touched, Orcs and Barrow-wights did not even have time to scream before they were burned into blackened charcoal.