TEIN, Sauron
didn't know they were coming to Mordor. As has been pointed out, Tolkien plainly stated that Sauron could not imagine anyone would want to destroy the Ring (he didn't just say this in one of his letters, it is stated in the book as the rationale for sending Frodo to Mordor). People (or Maiar, as the case may be) usually expect other people (or ... well, anyone) to do what they themselves would do under the same circumstances. Sauron is all about power, therefore, he thinks of other people's motivations in terms of the hunger for power. Certainly the idea of a Hobbit creeping into Mordor to destroy the Ring would have been ludicrous to him. (One reason why they decided it would be a good plan.) Once he realized the Ring was on the move, the natural assumption would be that it was going to Minas Tirith to defend the city, or to some other strong place from which to challenge him. This would also be Saruman's assumption. When Sauron saw Pippin in the Orthanc palantir, he was puzzled. Had Saruman betrayed him by taking the Ring for himself, or merely snagged a Hobbit for questioning? When he shortly thereafter saw Aragorn in the same palantir, what should he think but that Aragorn had taken over Orthanc and the Ring and was about to challenge him. But where and how? Will Aragorn go to Minas Tirith and save the city first? Or will he just hunker down in the all but impregnable Orthanc and challenge him from there? Isildur's heir--Ring--Narsil reforged--Orthanc -- not a pleasant prospect for Sauron, and he's not thinking much about Hobbits at that point. Seemingly, the Nazgûl he sent to Saruman cleared some of that up. But Saruman never had Pippin, he knows no more about the whereabouts of the Ring than Sauron does. He does, however, see Pippin and Merry in company with Gandalf and Aragorn. For all that anyone on Sauron's side knows (except the Wraiths at Weathertop, who have probably not been asked to identify Merry and Pippin from a photo-array by the Mordor police department) one of these two is probably the Baggins everyone has been looking for. No one has any reason to suspect that there is another Hobbit or two heading for Mordor, because Frodo and Sam were not there when Saruman's orcs attacked Boromir and took Merry and Pippin. Saruman
may know there were other Hobbits in the party heading South, but he is clearly not telling Sauron everything he knows when he knows it, and even if he knows there were two more Hobbits, their journey when last seen was in the direction of Gondor.
Everything points to Gondor. Again the focus is on Minas Tirith, and it is there that Sauron sends his army. He does
not put any extra patrol on the borders of Mordor, which is what he would do if he suspected that someone was going to do the unthinkable after all and try to destroy the Ring at Mount Doom. The guard on the borders of Mordor is exactly the same as it has always been. As for Nazgûl searching the Dead Marshes for Frodo, I think you are confusing the book with the movie. In the book, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum are aware of one of them flying high overhead, and there is no reason to believe that it wasn't simply on its way somewhere else.
HareBrain said:
so the chance of him guarding Mount Doom from a landing by eagles is remote.
As I said before, any eagle entering Sauron's airspace is going to attract hostile attention. Sauron has spies everywhere, even among the birds of the air. The chances that an eagle could reach Mount Doom undetected and unattacked are also remote. In fact, now that I think of it, if Sauron did suspect that someone was going to carry the Ring into Mordor to destroy it (which he doesn't), he'd be just as likely to think that eagles would be involved as all the readers who have asked the question. Sending the Ring via eagle is just not the safe and sure method that so many readers seem to think it is. Yes, one could make a case for it -- but there is a stronger case for doing it the way the Council finally decided to do it. Most of the case against sending Frodo depends on things that
were not done or known at the time of the Council. On the other hand, the reasons for not sending an eagle would already be plain to them.
As for a Hobbit or anyone else riding an eagle all the way to Mordor, or even across Mordor -- conspicuous, and probably hampering the eagle to the point that it is flying lower and slower. And while Sauron has not thought of an attempt to destroy the Ring up until that point,
what else would he think of someone on an eagle flying toward Orodruin?
I think someone mentioned that the eagles were beginning to sound like a taxi service. It seems to me that in some of these arguments they are beginning to sound like the Middle Earth equivalent of UPS. But you don't just put the Ring in a package, address it
Sammath Naur, Orodruin, Gorgoroth, MORDOR, hand it to an eagle, and the eagle drops it into the volcano a few days later.
And I think that if Tolkien had used the eagles that way in the book (which would actually have been a goodish size by the time Frodo gets to Rivendell -- and he never dreamed it would be such a long book anyway), for every person who thinks it was a mistake not to use the eagles now, there would probably be three or four who would see it as a cheap plot device.
