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Synopsis 1.06
(Well, it’s just my luck that my turn falls this week of all weeks. This may be shorter than my usual synopses, since I am not enthusiastic about extended battle sequences or scenes of catastrophe and mayhem—of which this episode, appropriately titled Udûn, which in Sindarin elvish is loosely translated as "Hell," has plenty—and I really don’t enjoy describing them in detail. I hope that those who do enjoy that kind of action—and I realize that a lot of people are drawn to fantasy by epic battle scenes, and judge a show as good or bad according to how many of those it features— will weigh in with their own descriptions or reviews of those particular scenes, which they are likely to describe more vividly and perhaps in more detail than I will. And also, of course, and as usual, I hope everyone contributes whatever thoughts they have about any or all aspects of the episode.)
Part I
The episode begins, oddly enough, with Adar crouching on a mound somewhere in the vicinity of Tirharad, planting seeds in the soil, and speaking in Quenya, “New life, in defiance of death.” (The meaning of this ritual is something we will learn later in the episode.) As he rises to his feet, we can see, in contrast to this sentiment, his massed army of torch-bearing orcs below.
Descending to meet them, he raises his voice to address them. “My children, we have endured much. We cast off our shackles.” There is enthusiastic agreement from the orcs. “Crossed mountains, fields, frost and fallow, till our feet bloodied the dirt. From Ered Mithrin to the Ethel Arnen, we have endured.” Snarling and growling from the orcs. “Yet tonight, one more trial awaits us. Our enemy may be weak, their numbers meager, before this night is through, some of us will fall. But for the first time, you do so not as unnamed slaves in far-away lands, but as brothers and sisters in our home.”
The orcs react with rough and loud agreement. (Is it because this is what they have been longing to hear, or just because orcs were constructed by Morgoth to believe anything their masters tell them?) One of them starts the chant “Nampat” and others quickly join in. “We reach out with the iron hand of the Uruk,” Adar continues, “and close our fist around these lands.” More growling, more chants of “Nampat (this is Black Speech for “death,” apparently the war cry of the orcs).
And thus, marching, they approach the fortress below the watchtower of Ostirith, where Bronwyn’s band of Southlanders have taken refuge. The orc army is not vast—especially compared to some we saw in LOTR—but it greatly outnumbers the men and women who still resist, and certainly makes for an intimidating sight.
To their surprise, they find the gates of the fortress unbarred, and led by Adar and Waldreg, they easily gain access. All is silent, the courtyard empty. Fires are burning here and there, as if to give the fortress the appearance of being occupied, but the silence and emptiness indicates far otherwise. An order is given to fan out and search. “Find them!”
But the only person left to find, as we soon see, is Arondir, concealed in one of the high places of the fortress, awaiting his moment. Meanwhile, Adar and Waldreg discover the sculpture of the sword that Arondir uncovered when he tore down the vines.
“Meaning no offense, Lord-Father,” says a disappointed Waldreg. “But where is he? What happened to Sauron?”
“Can’t find tooth or tail of him,” reports one of the orcs (“him” meaning Arondir, not Sauron), “must’ve got smart and scarpered.”
“No, the Elf’s here,” Adar replies quietly. Then, in Black Speech, “I can smell him.”
“Up here!” calls one of the other orcs. It's not difficult to spot Arondir now, since he has risen to his feet and is shooting arrows down on them. As usual, his arrows seem to always find their mark, and many of the orcs fall. Then Arondir sets fire to an arrow, and shoots it into some sort of device attached to the highest tower, the immensely tall watchtower of the elves—around which he has built a plan between the last episode and this (though by the look in his eyes at the time we did see the beginnings of it germinating in his mind before.)
Rocks and timbers begin to rain from the watchtower, crushing orcs below. “Get out now!,” Adar shouts to his troops. But Arondir employs another device, which allows him, even as he himself escapes through the gate, to seal it shut against those who would follow behind him. The orcs are trapped, as more and more boulders and stone blocks fall, and the tower itself sways, on the verge of collapsing altogether.
“Lord-Father, you must move now,” pleads Waldreg grasping his arm. “You must move!”
As the tower completely crumbles, burying orcs under tons of stone, Adar seems to come out of one of his trances, and finally moves. (Though how and where he and Waldreg escape the fortress is not shown, they will appear in later scenes, so we must assume they find a way.)
Meanwhile, on a facing hillside, we see Bronwyn and her refugees standing in the dark and we hear them cheering loudly.
“How many of ‘em could have survived that?” wonders Tredwill.
“How long do we have?” asks Theo, rather more practically.
“Not long enough,” says Bronwyn—but with determination, not despair. “Come on, we have to make ready the village.”
The next scene brings us to the Númenórean ships, sailing toward Middle-earth—whether this is the same day as the previous scene is uncertain (now that we know the timelines of the various storylines are not necessarily in sync) but the hour seems to be shortly before dawn. It’s a beautiful visual: sailing ships, an azure sea. While his shipmates sleep, a restless Isildur rises early, first to visit his horse and share an apple, and then to go on deck and gaze toward the east.
Standing at the rail, he is met by Galadriel. “Hoping to get the first sight of land?” she asks. “It’’ll be visible to your eyes in a few moments.”
“Is it visible to yours already?” he asks. And when she admits that it has been visible to her for about an hour, he says, “Keen are the eyes of the elves.” (Yes, we've heard this line before, elsewhere.)
“And yet, mine have not before seen you. What is your rank?”
Blushing he admits that he sweeps the stables. Galadriel smiles kindly. “Despise not the labor which humbles the heart. Humility has saved entire kingdoms the proud have all but led to ruin.”
“I did not join this expedition to be humbled, Commander. I was just trying to get away, as far as I could from that place.”
“Númenor?”
“It’s not Númenor. Not the real Númenor, anyway. If it ever existed.”
She smiles. “It existed. It exists still, if only in the heart of the lowliest stable sweep.”
It’s very likely that Galadriel visited Númenor in it’s earliest days, and also a number of times since. If there is anyone still living at the time of this story who knows “the real Númenor”, Galadriel seems a likely candidate. But I don’t think Isildur has a clue. He longs for a time and a place where great deeds were done, where heroic acts were an everyday sort of thing. But Númenor was given to the great Men of the past after they retired from performing their great deeds; it was a reward for their loyalty, and a chance to rebuild all they had lost during the wars, and then to build on top of that a great and glorious civilization. What he wants is something he neither understands nor is able to put into words, and I think Galadriel recognizes that and can sympathize, even though she knows her own deeds have not been inspired by a youthful spirit of adventure—though it was certainly that which brought her to Middle-earth in the first place—but by her deepest pain. However, this softer side of Galadriel that we see in this scene does not crush his enthusiasm by telling him that is the usual way of heroic deeds.
“It’s Isildur,” he says, with a lift of his chin, no doubt wishing to put aside the whole matter of his job in the stables.
Her smile broadens. “I might have known,” she says with a laugh. “You have the look of your father.”
“I was always told I look more like my mother.”
We are getting more and more of these brief references to his mother. I suspect she is going to turn out to have been someone of significance … besides being his mother and Elendil’s wife, that is.
As they speak the sun has risen above the horizon, flooding the scene with light, so that now he gets his first glimpse of Middle-earth ahead. Isildur grins broadly at the sight.
“Soldier,” says a deep voice behind him. Isildur turns and sees his father approaching. The boy bobs his head, and hurries below.
“His mother, what happened to her?” asks Galadriel.
Instead of immediately answering her question (characters in this series love to delay their answers!) Elendil says, “It is strange. Most of my life I’ve looked east to see the Sun rise over the sea and west to see it setting over the land. (Which indicates that for most of his life he has not lived in his family's ancient home on the western arm of the star-shaped island.) We’re sailing into the dawn, and yet, to me, it feels like the coming of night.” (A bit of intuition, here?)
Turning to leave, he adds over his shoulder, “She drowned.”
Well, ouch! That has to have been hard to accept in a culture taught to revere the sea. The sea is always right—but how can a family believe that when the sea has taken someone so dear to them? No wonder they are all feeling shattered! More than ever, I am sensing a story to be told about Elendil’s wife, and especially, perhaps, about her death.
As Galadriel stands looking toward Middle-earth, we hear Elendil’s voice-over: “Land has been sighted, Your Majesty.”
“How long until we make anchor?” asks Miriel. We enter her cabin and zoom in on a map they are both examining.
“It’s a full day’s sail into the mountains,” he says, as the camera follows the course of a painted river, “and from there, another day’s ride east into the vale.”
“Signal the other ships. Tell them to make all possible haste.”
The next scene takes place back in the Southlands. Arondir is angrily pounding the hilt of the black sword with a heavy hammer, but as hard and as long as he tries to break the hilt into pieces, he cannot damage it all. It is the hammer that breaks. Bronwyn comes up behind him. “It is beyond our skill to destroy,” he growls.
“Where will you hide it?” she asks.
“No one must know,” he says, wrapping it up in a piece of cloth. “Not even you.” (Which is logical; anyone who doesn’t know can't be made to tell.)
Unnoticed by either one of them, Theo is watching from a short distance away. Whether he still wants to keep the hilt or not (and probably at this point it is a bit of both) it still has enough hold on him that he wants to know where it is. So— though we don’t see him follow Arondir or know for certain that he spies on the elf as he hides the hilt—it’s a pretty safe bet that he does.
Meanwhile, villagers are readying for battle, honing blades, setting up traps, pouring lantern-oil on wagons full of hay, preparing for tactics presumably devised by Arondir—as the only person there with the necessary experience.
“Our enemy has been sighted,” Bronwyn proclaims a while later, as she and Arondir address the assembled villagers. “We survived them before. Now we must do it again. Tonight.”
“Our position gives us an advantage,” says Arondir. In the background we see bundles of arrows being raised by pulleys to reach the archers stationed on a roof. “But to use it, we must draw the enemy in close. We must wait until every last orc has crossed that bridge to spring our attack. This will test your nerve. Let it.”
They tell the crowd that any who do not fight will be barricaded inside the tavern. This will be their Keep, their fall-back point. “Take heart, all of you ,” says Arondir. “I have seen smaller armies defeat greater foes. Soon the sun will set. Do your part, and I swear to you, you shall see it rise again.” (A heartening speech, but a reckless promise.)
As those in the crowd disperse to take up their positions, Theo asks his mother,”What about me?”
“Tavern.”
“Tavern’s for wounded and children. I can fight!”
“I know you can.” She places a fond hand on his shoulder, and then provides him with a long spear. “Which is why I need you in there, protecting those who cannot.”
As they head for the tavern door,, husbands and wives embrace, parents say farewell to their children, friends hug or pat each other on the back. For all the brave words spoken, it is obvious that everyone but the smallest child is aware that many of them may never meet again.
And with a tearful smile from Bronwyn and a nervous one from Theo, mother and son go their separate ways.
“Are you ready?” Arondir asks Bronwyn, a little later.
“No. Are you?”
For answer he brings out a pouch containing the alfirin seeds she gave him in an earlier episode. He puts two seeds into her hand. “It is a tradition among elves, before a battle begins. Plant one.” (Yet he gives her two, and Adar planted a handful.)
“New life, in defiance of death?” she asks.
Arondir offers her his hand, which she takes. “It is believed that one of the Valar watches over growing things, and those who tend them.” Leading her aside from the others, he places her palm against the bark of a tree. “The rest, we shall plant after the battle is over. In a new garden. Together.”
“Promise me,” she says, tears in her eyes. He pulls her into his arms and they exchange a long kiss. (Possibly their first?)
Night falls. All is peaceful for a while except for owls hooting in the woods, the crackling of a fire in the tavern. Everyone waits with trembling breath for the enemy to attack. (The long wait must stretch their nerves.) It is Arondir, of course, who first spots the torches of the orcs coming over the hill. The enemy advances steadily, but the villagers prove steady as well, waiting, as instructed, until all have crossed the bridge. As the orcs begin a search of the area around the houses, opening doors and finding no one inside, Bronwyn lights the first of the hay carts and sends it rumbling toward the village square. Other wagons are set in motion, coming in from all directions, imprisoning the orcs within a wall of flame.
The orcs panic, and Arondir and his archers up on the roof begin a steady barrage. The battle is joined. The villagers, though few, have some slight advantage because they have cover, and the orcs are trapped within range of the archers. Nevetheless, there are heavy losses on both sides.
Then some of the orcs kick a path past the burning barricade, and head for the tavern. They carry a large battering ram to knock down the door. This is when other villagers, waiting unseen until now, come rushing from behind the buildings, armed with spears and other weapons, shouting, “Fight for the Southlands!”
It is a fierce and bloody battle. Orcs assail the roof, and kill some of the archers. A few of the orcs are knocked off, and Arondir tumbles along with them, landing hard on the ground. He rises and joins the battle, but is assailed by an enormous orc, who tosses him around like a rag doll. For all his elven agility and his martial arts moves, Arondir, is repeatedly pummeled, thrown to the ground, and sent crashing heavily into stone walls. For a moment it looks like it is the end for him, but Bronwyn comes up from behind, and runs the giant through with her blade.
There is a pause, during which the battle seems over, and the Southlanders cheer and embrace each other. But Arondir, who is covered in the thick black blood of his gigantic adversary, notices one of the bodies lying in the square. Though he is masked like an orc, his congealing blood is red, like a human or an elf. Arondir kneels by the body and calls to Bronwyn. When Arondir removes the mask, there is a collective gasp, and those around him recognize the corpse as one of their former neighbors.
As they remove the masks or helmets disguising the faces of the fallen, the Southlanders do find orcs among the dead, but also many familiar faces. “We were fighting our own,” whispers Tredwill. The rest of Bronwyn’s surviving band is too busy mourning the deaths of their friends and neighbors, treacherous though they were, to keep up their guard as they should.
A nearby orc, not quite dead yet, chuckles. “Thought we’d take ‘em in for nothinin’? Had to pay the toll. And now, all of you will.“ As the orc sputters and dies, Arondir gazes out into the darkness, just as arrows come flying from the shadows, taking out the archers still on the tavern roof, and Tredwill down in the square.
Bronwyn comes running to tend his wounds, but is pierced by one of the orc archers’ arrows herself. The long shaft goes all the way through her shoulder and out the other side. More and more Southlanders fall. Arondir shouts, “Everyone to the Keep!” He lifts Bronwyn and sends Theo on ahead. The boy helps to support the wounded as he goes.
Those still alive and on their feet reach the tavern, carrying the wounded, then lying them down on tables to be treated (But their healer is lying wounded herself, and who among them, except the elf, knows the first thing about battlefield first aid.) Theo looks out to see that there are more orcs coming, so he slams the door behind him, and others thump a heavy bar into place.
Arondir carefully pulls the arrow out of Bronwyn’s shoulder, but the flow of blood is so great it’s clear that she is bleeding out. “Bring me some burning wood,” shouts Arondir, and between the elf and a nearly hysterical Theo—and despite her screams of agony—they manage to cauterize the wounds on both sides and save her, at least for the moment. Theo may seem like an idle and mischievous youth, but he is the teenage son of the village healer, and whether he has assisted in such procedures or not before, he has probably seen them. Though such things are different when it's your own mother, he does hold it together just enough to competently assist.
Between the giant orc and Bronwyn’s gushing wounds—and I do mean gushing, because the table where she lies is puddled with her blood—this is by far and away the goriest episode in the series so far. It has also been the most violent. At this point, I gave my husband a pathetic look and asked, “Shouldn’t it be morning yet?” He thought so, too. But the horrors were far from over.
Through the wall, the the survivors can hear the enemy’s war chant, “Nampat! Nampat!” The villagers scream and exclaim in horror.
Briefly, we are given a glimpse outside. Orcs run rampant through the village. Adar, meanwhile, strolls on ahead, as calm and confident as though already assured of victory. It looks like he is right, for the people of Tirharad have few defenses left. A party of burly orcs carries the battering ram, and begins pounding on the door. Inside, seeing their barred door buckle, the Southlanders scream some more.
Far away, the sun is rising, turning the sky a pearly pink. A host of Númenórean cavalry races across the land, with Galadriel in the lead, and Halbrand not far behind But can they possibly get there in time?
Back in the village, the tavern door falls with a crash. Arondir leaps forward to challenge the first orcs to enter, but one of them grabs Theo and holds a long knife to his throat, while others stand menacingly over the wounded Bronwyn. Arondir does not dare to risk their lives, and all of the fight has seemingly gone out of the Southlanders.
Adar enters. “What I seek,” he says to Arondir in Quenya, “give it to me.”
“I will consider it,” answers Arondir. Adar merely glances toward one of his orcs, who, with no further prompting, sticks his sword through one of the villagers and slowly pulls it out again. (There is no blood shown here, but somehow I found the casual way the orc guts a man who is simply standing there passively more deeply disturbing than anything in the battle.)
“Why risk their lives for such a little thing?” asks Adar. This time a woman is stabbed. Arondir reacts furiously, but he doesn’t speak. So Adar indicates that Bronwyn should be next.
This, of course,is too much for Theo. “Wait! It’s under here.”
Arondir calls out to the boy, but Theo only says, “I’m sorry,” and bends down to pry up a stone from the floor, revealing a hole beneath.
Adar kneels down and picks up the cloth-wrapped bundle. He pulls back the wrapping enough to see that it is indeed the black sword. He takes a deep, satisfied breath.
Would Adar spare the remaining villagers, since he now has what he came for? I wouldn’t bet on it, but we are not to know, because now there is rumbling, growing louder and louder, nearer and nearer, as of many hooves hitting the ground.
(to be continued)
Creating topic, remember you
can only discuss this episode
inside this topic. Reviews of
the episode are encouraged
-----------------------------
Synopsis 1.06
(Well, it’s just my luck that my turn falls this week of all weeks. This may be shorter than my usual synopses, since I am not enthusiastic about extended battle sequences or scenes of catastrophe and mayhem—of which this episode, appropriately titled Udûn, which in Sindarin elvish is loosely translated as "Hell," has plenty—and I really don’t enjoy describing them in detail. I hope that those who do enjoy that kind of action—and I realize that a lot of people are drawn to fantasy by epic battle scenes, and judge a show as good or bad according to how many of those it features— will weigh in with their own descriptions or reviews of those particular scenes, which they are likely to describe more vividly and perhaps in more detail than I will. And also, of course, and as usual, I hope everyone contributes whatever thoughts they have about any or all aspects of the episode.)
Part I
The episode begins, oddly enough, with Adar crouching on a mound somewhere in the vicinity of Tirharad, planting seeds in the soil, and speaking in Quenya, “New life, in defiance of death.” (The meaning of this ritual is something we will learn later in the episode.) As he rises to his feet, we can see, in contrast to this sentiment, his massed army of torch-bearing orcs below.
Descending to meet them, he raises his voice to address them. “My children, we have endured much. We cast off our shackles.” There is enthusiastic agreement from the orcs. “Crossed mountains, fields, frost and fallow, till our feet bloodied the dirt. From Ered Mithrin to the Ethel Arnen, we have endured.” Snarling and growling from the orcs. “Yet tonight, one more trial awaits us. Our enemy may be weak, their numbers meager, before this night is through, some of us will fall. But for the first time, you do so not as unnamed slaves in far-away lands, but as brothers and sisters in our home.”
The orcs react with rough and loud agreement. (Is it because this is what they have been longing to hear, or just because orcs were constructed by Morgoth to believe anything their masters tell them?) One of them starts the chant “Nampat” and others quickly join in. “We reach out with the iron hand of the Uruk,” Adar continues, “and close our fist around these lands.” More growling, more chants of “Nampat (this is Black Speech for “death,” apparently the war cry of the orcs).
And thus, marching, they approach the fortress below the watchtower of Ostirith, where Bronwyn’s band of Southlanders have taken refuge. The orc army is not vast—especially compared to some we saw in LOTR—but it greatly outnumbers the men and women who still resist, and certainly makes for an intimidating sight.
To their surprise, they find the gates of the fortress unbarred, and led by Adar and Waldreg, they easily gain access. All is silent, the courtyard empty. Fires are burning here and there, as if to give the fortress the appearance of being occupied, but the silence and emptiness indicates far otherwise. An order is given to fan out and search. “Find them!”
But the only person left to find, as we soon see, is Arondir, concealed in one of the high places of the fortress, awaiting his moment. Meanwhile, Adar and Waldreg discover the sculpture of the sword that Arondir uncovered when he tore down the vines.
“Meaning no offense, Lord-Father,” says a disappointed Waldreg. “But where is he? What happened to Sauron?”
“Can’t find tooth or tail of him,” reports one of the orcs (“him” meaning Arondir, not Sauron), “must’ve got smart and scarpered.”
“No, the Elf’s here,” Adar replies quietly. Then, in Black Speech, “I can smell him.”
“Up here!” calls one of the other orcs. It's not difficult to spot Arondir now, since he has risen to his feet and is shooting arrows down on them. As usual, his arrows seem to always find their mark, and many of the orcs fall. Then Arondir sets fire to an arrow, and shoots it into some sort of device attached to the highest tower, the immensely tall watchtower of the elves—around which he has built a plan between the last episode and this (though by the look in his eyes at the time we did see the beginnings of it germinating in his mind before.)
Rocks and timbers begin to rain from the watchtower, crushing orcs below. “Get out now!,” Adar shouts to his troops. But Arondir employs another device, which allows him, even as he himself escapes through the gate, to seal it shut against those who would follow behind him. The orcs are trapped, as more and more boulders and stone blocks fall, and the tower itself sways, on the verge of collapsing altogether.
“Lord-Father, you must move now,” pleads Waldreg grasping his arm. “You must move!”
As the tower completely crumbles, burying orcs under tons of stone, Adar seems to come out of one of his trances, and finally moves. (Though how and where he and Waldreg escape the fortress is not shown, they will appear in later scenes, so we must assume they find a way.)
Meanwhile, on a facing hillside, we see Bronwyn and her refugees standing in the dark and we hear them cheering loudly.
“How many of ‘em could have survived that?” wonders Tredwill.
“How long do we have?” asks Theo, rather more practically.
“Not long enough,” says Bronwyn—but with determination, not despair. “Come on, we have to make ready the village.”
The next scene brings us to the Númenórean ships, sailing toward Middle-earth—whether this is the same day as the previous scene is uncertain (now that we know the timelines of the various storylines are not necessarily in sync) but the hour seems to be shortly before dawn. It’s a beautiful visual: sailing ships, an azure sea. While his shipmates sleep, a restless Isildur rises early, first to visit his horse and share an apple, and then to go on deck and gaze toward the east.
Standing at the rail, he is met by Galadriel. “Hoping to get the first sight of land?” she asks. “It’’ll be visible to your eyes in a few moments.”
“Is it visible to yours already?” he asks. And when she admits that it has been visible to her for about an hour, he says, “Keen are the eyes of the elves.” (Yes, we've heard this line before, elsewhere.)
“And yet, mine have not before seen you. What is your rank?”
Blushing he admits that he sweeps the stables. Galadriel smiles kindly. “Despise not the labor which humbles the heart. Humility has saved entire kingdoms the proud have all but led to ruin.”
“I did not join this expedition to be humbled, Commander. I was just trying to get away, as far as I could from that place.”
“Númenor?”
“It’s not Númenor. Not the real Númenor, anyway. If it ever existed.”
She smiles. “It existed. It exists still, if only in the heart of the lowliest stable sweep.”
It’s very likely that Galadriel visited Númenor in it’s earliest days, and also a number of times since. If there is anyone still living at the time of this story who knows “the real Númenor”, Galadriel seems a likely candidate. But I don’t think Isildur has a clue. He longs for a time and a place where great deeds were done, where heroic acts were an everyday sort of thing. But Númenor was given to the great Men of the past after they retired from performing their great deeds; it was a reward for their loyalty, and a chance to rebuild all they had lost during the wars, and then to build on top of that a great and glorious civilization. What he wants is something he neither understands nor is able to put into words, and I think Galadriel recognizes that and can sympathize, even though she knows her own deeds have not been inspired by a youthful spirit of adventure—though it was certainly that which brought her to Middle-earth in the first place—but by her deepest pain. However, this softer side of Galadriel that we see in this scene does not crush his enthusiasm by telling him that is the usual way of heroic deeds.
“It’s Isildur,” he says, with a lift of his chin, no doubt wishing to put aside the whole matter of his job in the stables.
Her smile broadens. “I might have known,” she says with a laugh. “You have the look of your father.”
“I was always told I look more like my mother.”
We are getting more and more of these brief references to his mother. I suspect she is going to turn out to have been someone of significance … besides being his mother and Elendil’s wife, that is.
As they speak the sun has risen above the horizon, flooding the scene with light, so that now he gets his first glimpse of Middle-earth ahead. Isildur grins broadly at the sight.
“Soldier,” says a deep voice behind him. Isildur turns and sees his father approaching. The boy bobs his head, and hurries below.
“His mother, what happened to her?” asks Galadriel.
Instead of immediately answering her question (characters in this series love to delay their answers!) Elendil says, “It is strange. Most of my life I’ve looked east to see the Sun rise over the sea and west to see it setting over the land. (Which indicates that for most of his life he has not lived in his family's ancient home on the western arm of the star-shaped island.) We’re sailing into the dawn, and yet, to me, it feels like the coming of night.” (A bit of intuition, here?)
Turning to leave, he adds over his shoulder, “She drowned.”
Well, ouch! That has to have been hard to accept in a culture taught to revere the sea. The sea is always right—but how can a family believe that when the sea has taken someone so dear to them? No wonder they are all feeling shattered! More than ever, I am sensing a story to be told about Elendil’s wife, and especially, perhaps, about her death.
As Galadriel stands looking toward Middle-earth, we hear Elendil’s voice-over: “Land has been sighted, Your Majesty.”
“How long until we make anchor?” asks Miriel. We enter her cabin and zoom in on a map they are both examining.
“It’s a full day’s sail into the mountains,” he says, as the camera follows the course of a painted river, “and from there, another day’s ride east into the vale.”
“Signal the other ships. Tell them to make all possible haste.”
The next scene takes place back in the Southlands. Arondir is angrily pounding the hilt of the black sword with a heavy hammer, but as hard and as long as he tries to break the hilt into pieces, he cannot damage it all. It is the hammer that breaks. Bronwyn comes up behind him. “It is beyond our skill to destroy,” he growls.
“Where will you hide it?” she asks.
“No one must know,” he says, wrapping it up in a piece of cloth. “Not even you.” (Which is logical; anyone who doesn’t know can't be made to tell.)
Unnoticed by either one of them, Theo is watching from a short distance away. Whether he still wants to keep the hilt or not (and probably at this point it is a bit of both) it still has enough hold on him that he wants to know where it is. So— though we don’t see him follow Arondir or know for certain that he spies on the elf as he hides the hilt—it’s a pretty safe bet that he does.
Meanwhile, villagers are readying for battle, honing blades, setting up traps, pouring lantern-oil on wagons full of hay, preparing for tactics presumably devised by Arondir—as the only person there with the necessary experience.
“Our enemy has been sighted,” Bronwyn proclaims a while later, as she and Arondir address the assembled villagers. “We survived them before. Now we must do it again. Tonight.”
“Our position gives us an advantage,” says Arondir. In the background we see bundles of arrows being raised by pulleys to reach the archers stationed on a roof. “But to use it, we must draw the enemy in close. We must wait until every last orc has crossed that bridge to spring our attack. This will test your nerve. Let it.”
They tell the crowd that any who do not fight will be barricaded inside the tavern. This will be their Keep, their fall-back point. “Take heart, all of you ,” says Arondir. “I have seen smaller armies defeat greater foes. Soon the sun will set. Do your part, and I swear to you, you shall see it rise again.” (A heartening speech, but a reckless promise.)
As those in the crowd disperse to take up their positions, Theo asks his mother,”What about me?”
“Tavern.”
“Tavern’s for wounded and children. I can fight!”
“I know you can.” She places a fond hand on his shoulder, and then provides him with a long spear. “Which is why I need you in there, protecting those who cannot.”
As they head for the tavern door,, husbands and wives embrace, parents say farewell to their children, friends hug or pat each other on the back. For all the brave words spoken, it is obvious that everyone but the smallest child is aware that many of them may never meet again.
And with a tearful smile from Bronwyn and a nervous one from Theo, mother and son go their separate ways.
“Are you ready?” Arondir asks Bronwyn, a little later.
“No. Are you?”
For answer he brings out a pouch containing the alfirin seeds she gave him in an earlier episode. He puts two seeds into her hand. “It is a tradition among elves, before a battle begins. Plant one.” (Yet he gives her two, and Adar planted a handful.)
“New life, in defiance of death?” she asks.
Arondir offers her his hand, which she takes. “It is believed that one of the Valar watches over growing things, and those who tend them.” Leading her aside from the others, he places her palm against the bark of a tree. “The rest, we shall plant after the battle is over. In a new garden. Together.”
“Promise me,” she says, tears in her eyes. He pulls her into his arms and they exchange a long kiss. (Possibly their first?)
Night falls. All is peaceful for a while except for owls hooting in the woods, the crackling of a fire in the tavern. Everyone waits with trembling breath for the enemy to attack. (The long wait must stretch their nerves.) It is Arondir, of course, who first spots the torches of the orcs coming over the hill. The enemy advances steadily, but the villagers prove steady as well, waiting, as instructed, until all have crossed the bridge. As the orcs begin a search of the area around the houses, opening doors and finding no one inside, Bronwyn lights the first of the hay carts and sends it rumbling toward the village square. Other wagons are set in motion, coming in from all directions, imprisoning the orcs within a wall of flame.
The orcs panic, and Arondir and his archers up on the roof begin a steady barrage. The battle is joined. The villagers, though few, have some slight advantage because they have cover, and the orcs are trapped within range of the archers. Nevetheless, there are heavy losses on both sides.
Then some of the orcs kick a path past the burning barricade, and head for the tavern. They carry a large battering ram to knock down the door. This is when other villagers, waiting unseen until now, come rushing from behind the buildings, armed with spears and other weapons, shouting, “Fight for the Southlands!”
It is a fierce and bloody battle. Orcs assail the roof, and kill some of the archers. A few of the orcs are knocked off, and Arondir tumbles along with them, landing hard on the ground. He rises and joins the battle, but is assailed by an enormous orc, who tosses him around like a rag doll. For all his elven agility and his martial arts moves, Arondir, is repeatedly pummeled, thrown to the ground, and sent crashing heavily into stone walls. For a moment it looks like it is the end for him, but Bronwyn comes up from behind, and runs the giant through with her blade.
There is a pause, during which the battle seems over, and the Southlanders cheer and embrace each other. But Arondir, who is covered in the thick black blood of his gigantic adversary, notices one of the bodies lying in the square. Though he is masked like an orc, his congealing blood is red, like a human or an elf. Arondir kneels by the body and calls to Bronwyn. When Arondir removes the mask, there is a collective gasp, and those around him recognize the corpse as one of their former neighbors.
As they remove the masks or helmets disguising the faces of the fallen, the Southlanders do find orcs among the dead, but also many familiar faces. “We were fighting our own,” whispers Tredwill. The rest of Bronwyn’s surviving band is too busy mourning the deaths of their friends and neighbors, treacherous though they were, to keep up their guard as they should.
A nearby orc, not quite dead yet, chuckles. “Thought we’d take ‘em in for nothinin’? Had to pay the toll. And now, all of you will.“ As the orc sputters and dies, Arondir gazes out into the darkness, just as arrows come flying from the shadows, taking out the archers still on the tavern roof, and Tredwill down in the square.
Bronwyn comes running to tend his wounds, but is pierced by one of the orc archers’ arrows herself. The long shaft goes all the way through her shoulder and out the other side. More and more Southlanders fall. Arondir shouts, “Everyone to the Keep!” He lifts Bronwyn and sends Theo on ahead. The boy helps to support the wounded as he goes.
Those still alive and on their feet reach the tavern, carrying the wounded, then lying them down on tables to be treated (But their healer is lying wounded herself, and who among them, except the elf, knows the first thing about battlefield first aid.) Theo looks out to see that there are more orcs coming, so he slams the door behind him, and others thump a heavy bar into place.
Arondir carefully pulls the arrow out of Bronwyn’s shoulder, but the flow of blood is so great it’s clear that she is bleeding out. “Bring me some burning wood,” shouts Arondir, and between the elf and a nearly hysterical Theo—and despite her screams of agony—they manage to cauterize the wounds on both sides and save her, at least for the moment. Theo may seem like an idle and mischievous youth, but he is the teenage son of the village healer, and whether he has assisted in such procedures or not before, he has probably seen them. Though such things are different when it's your own mother, he does hold it together just enough to competently assist.
Between the giant orc and Bronwyn’s gushing wounds—and I do mean gushing, because the table where she lies is puddled with her blood—this is by far and away the goriest episode in the series so far. It has also been the most violent. At this point, I gave my husband a pathetic look and asked, “Shouldn’t it be morning yet?” He thought so, too. But the horrors were far from over.
Through the wall, the the survivors can hear the enemy’s war chant, “Nampat! Nampat!” The villagers scream and exclaim in horror.
Briefly, we are given a glimpse outside. Orcs run rampant through the village. Adar, meanwhile, strolls on ahead, as calm and confident as though already assured of victory. It looks like he is right, for the people of Tirharad have few defenses left. A party of burly orcs carries the battering ram, and begins pounding on the door. Inside, seeing their barred door buckle, the Southlanders scream some more.
Far away, the sun is rising, turning the sky a pearly pink. A host of Númenórean cavalry races across the land, with Galadriel in the lead, and Halbrand not far behind But can they possibly get there in time?
Back in the village, the tavern door falls with a crash. Arondir leaps forward to challenge the first orcs to enter, but one of them grabs Theo and holds a long knife to his throat, while others stand menacingly over the wounded Bronwyn. Arondir does not dare to risk their lives, and all of the fight has seemingly gone out of the Southlanders.
Adar enters. “What I seek,” he says to Arondir in Quenya, “give it to me.”
“I will consider it,” answers Arondir. Adar merely glances toward one of his orcs, who, with no further prompting, sticks his sword through one of the villagers and slowly pulls it out again. (There is no blood shown here, but somehow I found the casual way the orc guts a man who is simply standing there passively more deeply disturbing than anything in the battle.)
“Why risk their lives for such a little thing?” asks Adar. This time a woman is stabbed. Arondir reacts furiously, but he doesn’t speak. So Adar indicates that Bronwyn should be next.
This, of course,is too much for Theo. “Wait! It’s under here.”
Arondir calls out to the boy, but Theo only says, “I’m sorry,” and bends down to pry up a stone from the floor, revealing a hole beneath.
Adar kneels down and picks up the cloth-wrapped bundle. He pulls back the wrapping enough to see that it is indeed the black sword. He takes a deep, satisfied breath.
Would Adar spare the remaining villagers, since he now has what he came for? I wouldn’t bet on it, but we are not to know, because now there is rumbling, growing louder and louder, nearer and nearer, as of many hooves hitting the ground.
(to be continued)
