Chapter 401: Into the Heart of Mordor
Against all expectations, Levi and Beherdan's combined assault had not left so much as a mark on Sauron. He dispersed the black mist around him, surged forward, and leapt high, swinging the mace down with terrible force.
Caught off guard, Beherdan took the hit head-on and staggered backward several steps, nearly throwing Levi from his back.
The blow was staggeringly heavy. Some of Beherdan's scales came loose, and his health dipped by a sliver.
"Go deal with the Nazgûl and the rest of Mordor's army," Levi said.
He leapt down immediately and re-engaged Sauron himself.
Beherdan banked sharply and flew off to hunt Mordor's high-value targets. He knew that the black-armoured thing whose appearance could not compare to Levi's was not an opponent he could handle alone.
The battlefield remained deafening. The scale of the engagement was among the largest this entire Age had seen.
The Allied army of Men, the attacking force, was magnificent: silver-white and gleaming, spread across the plain of war, beginning to resemble the legendary host of the Last Alliance, that force once called the greatest Middle-earth had ever fielded.
On the other side, the enemy came on like a dark tide surging out of a pitch-black thunderstorm.
Orcs. Uruk-hai. Trolls. Olog-hai. Mordor's native spiders from the southern valleys. Fell beasts from the breeding grounds in the north.
Dark creatures howled and shrieked across every ridge and hollow, too many to count.
And yet, despite all of it, anyone watching could see which side was losing.
The Allied army drove into Mordor's host like a blade, forcing it back toward the Black Gate, step by step.
Levi was the tip of that blade. As he pushed Sauron backward, the army surged in behind him, shoving aside everything on both flanks.
Unstoppable.
As the allies pressed deeper into Mordor, the front widened, and the number of enemies they faced grew.
Before the Black Gate, they had only needed to fight in one direction.
Inside the gate, the pressure came from every side. Enemies everywhere, no direction was safe.
The deeper they went, the heavier the pressure, the tighter the encirclement.
It was hard to say whether Sauron was truly being beaten back by Levi or whether he was deliberately feigning weakness, retreating to draw the Allied army into a killing box.
But even if that was the plan, it failed. The army stood like an iron seawall, and no matter how the black tide crashed against it, it did not fall.
Elsewhere, things were not going so smoothly.
In the pass of Cirith Ungol, near Minas Morgul, shadow crept upward from the deep places, rising from below the earth to the surface.
"The smell of flesh..."
Shelob, recovering from her wounds in the uttermost depths, felt a tremor run through her web. Then came a scent: sweet, tender—the unmistakable scent of small, helpless prey.
So she hauled her injured body upward, slowly, painfully.
She saw her partner: Gollum.
And the two hobbits Gollum had brought with him. The three of them seemed to be arguing about something.
What they were arguing about did not matter. A few more words would only get the blood flowing, make the meat sweeter.
A moment later, one of them left. The fat one.
Gollum praised the thinner hobbit and quietly plucked one of the webs.
Then, at a certain point, he ducked behind a rock and vanished.
Only one hobbit remained.
Shelob knew her moment had come. She burst from hiding and struck, wrapping the lone hobbit in web before he could react.
Her existing wounds were serious. She desperately needed to feed and recover. In her hunger, she forgot to watch her back.
The spider caught Frodo. Sam was behind her.
"Get away from him!"
A roar, and then a short sword of uncanny sharpness plunged into Shelob's belly. She screamed, a sound fit to split stone.
While she reeled, Sam slashed through the web binding Frodo and poured a bottle of milk down his throat.
"Lord Levi said this cures poison. I saved it all the way here, never drank a drop, no matter how thirsty I got. Please, please wake up, Mr. Frodo..."
Roar!
Frodo did not stir, but Shelob recovered fast. She shrieked and lunged again, going for Sam this time.
But when Sam raised that short sword of unknown origin, she hesitated.
"Back off, you foul spider! This sword was given to me by Lord Levi, the legend of the North, for this very journey! If you don't want to die on its edge, then leave!"
She might have been better off if he had said nothing.
The instant that name left his mouth, Shelob's rage exploded.
I can't beat him—but do you think I can't crush the two of you?!
"He's not here… the one he's talking about. Not here. No need to be afraid…" And of course, Gollum chose that moment to stir trouble from behind a rock.
So Shelob pushed through her fresh wound and the old injuries that had begun throbbing the instant she heard that name, and pressed forward once more.
Just as she was about to pounce, with Sam refusing to move from Frodo's side, a moment away from a fight to the death, a light blazed to life.
Frodo was awake. Seeing the great spider bearing down on them, he remembered the Lady Galadriel's words and pulled out the Phial she had given him, that crystal vessel filled with the light of hope. The radiance stabbed into Shelob's eyes, all but blinding her.
Then Sam's gift-sword and Frodo's Sting struck together, piercing Shelob's flesh.
She screamed and crashed backward into the rock wall, her strength draining away.
The old wounds Levi had inflicted flared up again, compounded now by the grievous damage two hobbits had dealt her. Shelob understood, with sudden, horrible clarity, that her destruction was at hand.
She dragged herself up and tried to flee.
Was the great Shelob truly going to perish here, today?
She refused to accept that her end could be this graceless.
As a child of Ungoliant, she had devoured Men, Elves, and Dwarves. She had eaten nearly every creature in Middle-earth. She had spawned countless hybrid offspring that infested Mirkwood and the valleys of southern Mordor. Even Sauron himself had feared her.
She had spun webs to catch the mightiest prey, and she had spun webs of fate to torment the innocent.
But now, a different kind of web had closed around her, and she could not break free.
That man. He had foreseen this.
From the moment he came to this pass and carved her open with that terrifying greatsword, the plan had already been laid.
He had foreseen everything.
The web of fate drew tight.
Shelob's heart filled with regret, and with a deep, consuming terror of the one whose name most dark creatures dared not speak.
"Die, foul spider!"
The voices around her blurred.
Shelob clawed desperately toward the deepest part of the tunnel, but still took two more sword thrusts before she fell.
She plunged into the abyss and vanished into the dark, without a sound.
"You're next, Gollum!"
Sam had not forgotten who was behind all of this. But when he looked to where Gollum had been hiding, the creature was long gone.
"You'd better run fast!"
The danger had passed. Sam let out a long breath.
"Hah..."
He looked at the short sword in his hand, turning it thoughtfully.
"It's strange. I can feel it. There's a kind of power in this blade. When I held it up against that spider, it was like something was helping me."
"I want to give it a name..."
Thinking of one of Levi's famous weapons, Nemesis, Sam said suddenly, "How about Spider's Nemesis?"
"Good name, Sam," Frodo said, nodding.
The two hobbits pressed on.
But without Gollum to guide them, the way forward was suddenly unclear.
They slipped out of the tunnel as quietly as they could, braced for Mordor's armies to be swarming everywhere. But when they looked toward Mount Doom, the host that should have been there was gone. Every last soldier had been pulled north.
The land was empty.
Just as relief washed over them, a hand seized Frodo.
Both hobbits spun, instinctively fought back, but the ambusher was far too skilled, brutally strong, and overwhelmingly fast. He had them on the ground in seconds.
Sam looked up and discovered, to his disbelief, that this formidable attacker was a lame, one-eyed Uruk-hai.
He drew his sword again and tried to rush the creature.
But inside the Tower of Cirith Ungol, nearby, a garrison of Orcs was alerted.
At the lame Uruk-hai's command, they swarmed out and surrounded the hobbits.
He was clearly the captain of this tower's garrison.
Sam and Frodo knew it was over. They fought with everything they had, but they were facing an entire squad. In the end, they were taken.
Their weapons were confiscated at once and handed to the lame captain.
"The Master said if we catch hobbits, we're to send them over in one piece."
Thanks to Sauron's standing orders, Sam and Frodo's lives were spared.
But when the lame captain examined Sam's short sword, or more precisely, when he saw the inscription on its blade, he abruptly changed his mind.
"Wait. Take them to my quarters first. Not a word of this to anyone. I need to interrogate these two spies and find out what intelligence they're carrying."
After waving his underlings off with a passable excuse, the lame captain stressed again, sharp and cold:
"This is also the Master's will. Anyone who disobeys, or who asks questions, I'll treat them as a traitor and execute them on the spot."
"For the Master!" he declared with pious fervour.
"For the Master!" the Orcs echoed.
(End of Chapter)