Middle-earth seen by the barbarians: The complete collection including a previously unpublished essay (16 page)

By butchering the Easterlings, Romendacil II. had temporarily saved Dorwinion and Rhovanion, and an increasingly fragile peace was retained beyond Anduin that would last well-nigh for another 600 years. Yet Gondor’s star had begun to wane. In the 15
^th
century TA, ‘
there was already rebellion in the southern provinces
’. In 1448, after Gondor’s civil war known as the Kin-strife, the exiled members of Castamir’s faction became corsairs and ‘
established themselves at Umbar
.’ Harondor fell, and ‘
the region of South Gondor became a debatable land between the Corsairs and the Kings
.’
(
KR
)
Being cut off from its own southern borders, indeed from all uncontested access to the lands beyond the river Poros, Gondor’s ‘
hold upon the Men of Harad was loosened
’
(
KR
)
, and the Castamirioni instigated and supported rebellion against the throne of Osgiliath there.

The kings of Harad willingly waived their tributary service and supplied the rebels in the port of Umbar.
(
HE
)
The crisis deteriorated to the point when in 1540 TA, ‘
King Aldamir
[was]
slain in war with the Harad and Corsairs of Umbar
’, and the conflict continued until, eleven years later, ‘
Hyarmendacil II. defeat
[ed]
the Men of Harad
.’
(
TY
)

In the meantime, Rhún slowly recovered from the destruction inflicted by Romendacil II. A new power, the Wainriders, emerged from the rubble. They controlled a territory of unknown size, maybe as large as Gondor at its peak or even larger, forging an empire of hitherto unknown effectiveness.

One may wonder how such a huge, centralised political entity could have emerged among the Men of Darkness. It was not evidently ruled by Sauron or one of the Nazgûls though Sauron tried to influence it with ‘emissaries’, matter of fact, it often acted against the Dark Lord’s interests. Some supreme authority of unprecedented quality must have established itself in Rhún despite the acclaimed ‘weakening and disarraying’ inflicted by the Blue Istari. Alas, is there a real chance – or is it too much of speculation? - that one of them or both may have succumbed to Curunir-Saruman’s dreams of power and assumed overlordship over the Wainriders?

Gondor was both challenged and preserved when in 1636 TA ‘
a deadly plague came with dark winds out of the East
.’
(
KR
)
The pestilence hit Gondor so severely that its hold of the provinces beyond Anduin loosened, owing to massive depopulation. But ‘
no doubt the peoples further east had been equally afflicted
’
(
CE
)
, which was why the pending catastrophe was held back for some time. Otherwise, the Wainrider empire ‘
might have overwhelmed
[Gondor]
in its weakness; but Sauron could wait
.’
(
KR
)

The alliance between Umbar and the kingdoms of Near Harad had collapsed by then. ‘
The peoples of Harad were at this period engaged in wars and feuds of their own’
,
(
CE
)
leaving provocations against Gondor to the Castamirioni. King Telumehtar, ‘
being troubled by the insolence of the Corsairs, who raided his coasts even as far as the Anfalas, gathered his forces and in 1810 took Umbar by storm
.’
(
KR
)
He ethnically cleansed the Corsairs, destroyed the port entirely and kept it desolate for the following century. ‘
In that war the last descendants of Castamir perished, and Umbar was again held for a while by the kings. Telumehtar added to his name the title Umbardacil
.’
(
TY
)
Well done; but Umbardacil should have taken note of the much greater peril looming at the Sea of Rhún. For the Wainrider empire had already advanced to the very border of Dorwinion.

In 1851 TA, ‘
stirred up, as was afterwards seen, by the emissaries of Sauron, they made a sudden assault upon Gondor
.’
(
KR
)
The Northmen, still accounting for most of the population in Gondor-beyond-Anduin, ‘
bore the brunt of the first assaults
.’
(
CE
)
Replenishment forces came to the rescue but could not achieve much: five years later, during the ill-fated Battle of the Plains in 1856 TA, ‘
King Narmacil II was slain … beyond Anduin
’
(
KR
)
on a battlefield described as being located ‘
south of Mirkwood
’
(
CE
)
and ‘
north-east of the Morannon
.’
(
HE
)

As a result, Gondor-beyond-Anduin faltered, never to be regained. ‘
The people of eastern and southern Rhovanion were enslaved; and the frontiers of Gondor were for that time withdrawn to the Anduin and the Emyn Muil
.’
(
KR
)
Only the march of Dorwinion, cut off from the mainland, held out, now an exclave: an endangered island of civilisation in a raging barbarian sea (see chapter
V
).

Sauron had successfully pursued an obvious strategy. The Wainrider empire now extended westward to the confines of Mirkwood, bordering at the territory of Dol Guldur. Sauron had efficiently linked his abode with his main territory, opening up much needed supply lines from the east. The Wainriders were in control of all the lands from Erebor in the North to the Ash Mountains in the South and Anduin, in the east, their territory stretched even further south, to the borders of Khand. Defeat even of the Dúnedain might have been imminent if the Wainriders had not suffered so much from the plague of 1636. But benefiting from its devastating effects, ‘
the forces of Gondor had inflicted such losses on the Wainriders that they had not strength enough to press their invasion, until reinforced from the East, and were content for the time to complete their conquest of Rhovanion
.’
(
CE
)
For 43 years, Wilderland would remain a satrapy of the Wainrider empire.

In that troubled period, many Northmen fled from Gondor-beyond-Anduin and ‘
passing north between Mirkwood and Anduin settled in the Vales of Anduin, where they were joined by many fugitives who came through the Forest. This was the beginning of the Éothéod
.’
(
CE
)
It was also the ultimate ethnogenesis of the Rohirrim. Those Northmen who stayed behind became an oppressed minority, and the occupants’ numbers steadily increased until the Wainriders had gained enough power to consider further expansion of their empire.

They had not reckoned with the Northmen, however. ‘
King Calimehtar, son of Narmacil II,
[was warned]
that the Wainriders were plotting to raid Calenardhon over the Undeeps; but … also that a revolt of the Northmen who had been enslaved was being prepared and would burst into flame if the Wainriders became involved in war.
’
(
CE
)

This seemed a unique opportunity to push the enemy back beyond the Inland Sea and Calimehtar made a hazardous decision: He stationed the Southern Army away from the river Poros to counter the Wainriders’ invasion scheme, for the Haradrim as well seemed more concerned about the threat from their expansive empire than about Gondor, and he took the risk to expose his southern borders.

The king, ‘
helped by
[the]
revolt in Rhovanion, avenged his father with a great victory over the Easterlings upon Dagorlad in 1899, and for a while the peril was averted
.’
(
KR
)
But alas, the Northmen met resistance that was much harder than anticipated. They had not reckoned with the amazon-style defence of the ‘
dwellings of the Wainriders, and their storehouses, and their fortified camps of wagons
’ by their womenfolk who were skilfully trained in defending the home-front. ‘
Thus in the end they
[the Northmen]
never again returned to their former homes
’
(
CE
)
, and southern Rhovanion remained subject to the Wainrider empire. The lesson was learned, though, and the notion of training shieldmaidens caught on, though the Northmen never applied them in large numbers, unlike the Wainriders.

1. The younger women fought fiercely in defence of their homes and their children
   

Having secured its borders, the mysterious central authority of the Wainriders now aimed at a direction where resistance seemed weaker. ‘
Beyond the reach of the arms of Gondor, in lands east of the Sea of Rhún from which no tidings came to its Kings, their kinsfolk spread and multiplied. … The eastern Wainriders had been spreading southward, beyond Mordor, and were in conflict with the peoples of Khand and their neighbours further south
[i. e. with the Swarthy Men of Near Harad].’
(
KR
)

A conflict of that kind was certainly not in Sauron’s interests. It meant a waste of forces that he would have had better use for. But it took even his emissaries and instigators decades to disperse those undesirable ambitions of the Wainriders’ authority. As late as 1944, a fragile ‘
peace and alliance was agreed between these enemies of Gondor, and an attack was prepared that should be made at the same time from north and south
’ of Mordor. ‘
It was also clear that the hatred of Gondor, and the alliance of its enemies in concerted action (for which they themselves had neither the will nor the wisdom) was due to the machinations of Sauron
.’
(
CE
)

At the beginning of this war, ‘
the Wainriders had mustered a great host by the southern shores of the inland Sea of Rhún, strengthened by men of their kinsfolk in Rhovanion and from their new allies in Khand
.’
^[4]
(
CE
)
They initiated ‘
raids to the south of
[Rhovanion]
that came both up the river
[Anduin]
and through the Narrows of the Forest
[of Mirkwood, note the proximity of that assault path to Dol Guldur].’
(
CE
)

The Dúnedain were aware of the peril, but their condition was now even worse than it had been a century ago. Sauron had finally designed a master plan whose scope and ingenuity surpassed everything since the War of the Elves and Sauron in the Second Age.

1. The empire of the Wainriders was several times larger than Gondor