Chapter 327: The Cleansing of Angmar
"The sky has cleared."
On the Long Wall of the North, Gandalf looked up towards the distant heavens over Angmar and muttered to himself.
"No… not quite."
After a glance to left and right, he shook his head and denied his own words.
Only part of the sky was clear.
That part lay above the lands the host had already passed through. The black sorcery lingering there was fading as the evil creatures were cut down.
That retreat of shadow was spreading from the centre outwards as the cleansing went on.
At this rate, in a year or two, the corruption would be scoured from all this vast, poisoned land.
Such speed could not be called slow.
"It seems they do not need my help here."
Shaking his head, Gandalf stepped down from the wall and ambled off westward once more, heading straight for the Shire.
With a cart full of fireworks.
A new year had come.
At the Shire's noisy New Year feasts, the wizard sent flowers of fire bursting over the sky and carried tidings from the North to all his friends.
A year was enough for news of such a deed to reach every corner of Middle-earth.
In later years, folk would call this campaign against Angmar the Northern Expedition.
At the beginning of 2999, the Northern Expedition entered its final phase.
Most of Angmar's land lay cleared. Wherever the host had marched, the ground was splashed with the black blood of evil things, and the air was tainted with the reek of it.
"Assemble!"
In the cold, snowbound mountains at Angmar's far western edge, Levi's shout rang out. The legions behind him gathered at once, forming ranks as orderly and grave as ever.
With only disorganised rabble for an enemy, their own losses had been all but negligible.
The results were nothing short of astonishing.
"Carn Dûm."
From his vantage on a high ridge, Levi gazed at the crumbling fortress ahead, where masses of creatures were still clustered, and spoke its name.
Once, it had been the capital of the Witch-realm of Angmar. A thousand years before, forces from many lands had united to storm it. The Witch-king had been routed and fled, and the place abandoned.
Yet centuries later, the ruin had drawn evil things in again. A sick green light shimmered faintly along its walls.
"Looks like there is still magic woven into the stone."
Tap. Tap. Tap.
As Levi weighed whether to go and see if a pickaxe might break the warding, he heard hoofbeats behind him.
The soldiers parted in smooth order, opening a path for the galloping horse.
"Gandalf."
Seeing the rider, Levi lifted a hand in greeting.
"Levi!"
The horse halted, and Gandalf all but jumped down, calling his name. He nodded briefly to Aragorn at Levi's side, then caught his breath and said,
"I hear you mean to attack that fortress."
"Just so. The rest of Angmar is already bare. Every foe left has holed up in that stronghold. If we take it and clear out everything inside, this expedition can be declared finished."
Levi looked at the foul brown cloud hanging over Carn Dûm and the ice-bound plain beneath it, then turned his head to the clear sky and bright ground behind.
"After that, Angmar will never again be a refuge for evil."
Gandalf smiled.
"It will be a great deed. History will remember it."
"And you, Gandalf? Have you come to bear witness?" Levi asked.
"No."
Gandalf shook his head.
"Not merely to witness."
"Let me lend a hand as well."
Planting his staff, he stepped up beside Levi at the front of the host, facing the frozen waste and the cursed fortress beyond.
"I will deal with the magic on those walls."
"In truth… well, very well. I will leave it to you, our dependable wizard."
Levi had been about to add another solution, but let it rest.
There were many ways to crack a fortress, wards or no.
But if there was an easier method at hand, why not use it?
And so the Men gained a wizard as their aid. It was, after all, precisely the task for an Istar.
Measured against the others of his order, Gandalf truly was Middle-earth's workhorse wizard.
With a dull thud, light flowed from the tip of his staff. The sickly green sheen faded from the fortress, revealing bare black stone beneath, sheathed in thick, hard ice.
Thus, the final encirclement began.
Boom!
The first explosions shook the air at the front. With the warding gone, a few blocks of TNT were all it took to blast a gaping hole in the gate. Further charges slammed into other points along the walls, bringing nearly an entire face of the fort crashing down.
The creatures lurking within had nowhere left to hide. They could only come out and fight.
When the final preparations were complete, the army advanced in full force. The force of their advance seemed to drive the clouds themselves aside.
Chroniclers would write that the Lord of the North, the wizard, and the three commanders raised their swords and led the charge.
In less than a day, the fortress fell. Without proper defences, its last garrison was swept away.
By hiding in those walls, they had sealed their own escape. Not a single enemy slipped out alive.
Angmar's final shroud of cloud broke and scattered. Clear sky and bright sunlight poured down.
In time, the stained, brown soil would turn green. As in other lands, grass would spread like a carpet across the high plateau.
Now even the last faint chance of Angmar's return was quenched. Orcs and Wargs that had fled to holes in the deep woods and high crags were dug out in turn.
The western flank of the Misty Mountains was completely safe at last.
Across the range, only one place still held a great host of foes: Gundabad in the far north.
Those proud peaks had once been the awakening-place of the first of the Dwarves, Durin the Deathless, father of all his people. Later, the Orcs drove them out and made it their own mountain city.
When news of Angmar's doom reached them, the Orcs of Mount Gundabad shook with fear. To every quarter of the compass, they saw only enemies. There was nowhere left for them to run.
Not an inch.
As they had feared, the great host wheeled and turned its gaze upon Gundabad, intent on pressing the advantage and tearing out this last nest as well.
Facing Levi and the army he brought, the Orcs' hearts were ashes. Even their last, frantic struggles seemed feeble.
Others, however, were anything but calm.
"At the very least, you must take us along for this," came the Dwarves' demand.
They mustered a force overnight to join the assault on Gundabad.
This was, after all, the mountain where the first Dwarf in the world had woken—their ancestor and first King of Khazad-dûm, Durin I, the Deathless. For Dwarves, it was a sacred place, the source of their people in this world.
In late autumn of 2999, Mount Gundabad was declared cleansed. Not a single Orc remained.
The holy place of the Dwarves was reclaimed.
Gundabad became a new outpost of the Free Peoples. A few Dwarves and Men dwelt and worked there, but not many.
At the year's end, a watchtower rose high on the mountain, its duty to watch the lands around and further North.
Perhaps because the Gundabad range was so barren and stark, and held little beauty to common eyes, it did not draw much notice. Apart from the garrison, Men were rarely seen there.
Only Dwarves came often, and most of those were pilgrims. Drawn by the mountain's old renown, they laboured up its slopes to remember their forefather and honour the past.
History turned a new page.