The air in the Lower Ward was a thick reek of stinging charcoal smoke, heady with the savoury perfume of roasted lamb. Amidst the rhythmic clink-clink-clink of hammers on anvils and the persistent braying of pack donkeys, the glare of whitewashed buildings against the deep azure sky struck the eye with a blinding brilliance. Nearby, merchants haggled with frantic desperation, their voices rising like heat off the paving tiles. The ground was littered with fruit peels and cabbage stalks. Azrazôr paused in the shade of a yellowed awning at one of the blacksmiths' stalls, his hooded mask hiding his face despite the heat.
“Words weigh nothing, Northman. But my favor weighs a great deal, and the future of this realm weighs more still. If you fail us - we have a very talented executioner. Let us see if you are a master of men, or merely a master of talk,” he said.
Then Arnoldir stooped down, and picking up the blacksmith’s stock twister, lifted it behind his head, and with one fluid motion bent it around his thick neck as effortlessly as if it were soft lead wire. He was sure to do it quickly: not only was this more impressive, but if there was any hesitation, the steel would be harder to bend. He did not know why that was.
The blacksmith stopped mid-stroke at his anvil, jaw dropped. Seeing his tool folded in half like a noodle defied his understanding of physics. He knew better than to protest the ruin of his equipment, and kept his mouth shut until the muscle-bound stranger left his shop. “It was my best spring steel,” he complained to his apprentice later. “It took me three days to forge that taper and quench it just right.”
The Gondorian cast the bent stock twister aside, and as a coup de grâce, lifted the anvil over his head with one arm and held it there for five seconds. The anvil weighed around ten stone. He could have lifted more, but it was the heaviest object at hand.
A ring of curious onlookers in tunics and turbans had now formed a wide circle around the blacksmith’s stall, and catching sight of two boys gawking in the front, Arnoldir motioned to them to come forward. He lowered the anvil down and made them sit upon it. The anvil was bottom-heavy, and the boys squirmed - as he stooped down and lifted, he felt the weight shifting dangerously. Yet his hands were like iron clamps as they grasped the anvil in a crushing grip and squeezed the tapered steel with immense pressure. Then he lifted the anvil and boys together, and tossed the entire weight - he estimated it was about twenty stone now - up over his head and caught it again. The boys whooped and the crowd cheered.
He trickled a little water into his cupped palm and supped it, then sat back, shielding his eyes with his hand from the blazing light as he scanned his surroundings. By his reckoning he was about fifteen leagues east of Umbar Baharbêl. The pride of lions had crept away to hide in the shade of the overhanging cliff rocks, too timid to approach in the daylight. His only constant companions were the carrion birds; they preened their oily, anthracite-coloured feathers with curved beaks in a show of indifference, their pupils dilating as they fixated upon him every so often, gauging if he still moved.
It was hard to believe that this feral land was once part of Gondor. Under King Hyarmendacil I’s rule the Haradrim were brought under control by capturing their princes and keeping them in Osgiliath. Now that ancient High Seat lay in ruins. To imagine that Gondor’s power once stretched from the Sea of Rhûn to the River Gwathló, and all the way south to the haven of Umbar! Even the passes to Mordor were well-protected then.
The sons of Hyarmendacil I had become lazy and indolent, squandering their power; the famed Dunedain vigor had petered out, and the long declining rule of the Stewards began. That was the beginning of the end of Gondor. Some of its citizens might have little love for the reign of Denethor II, but the majority were suspicious of any outsider’s claim upon the throne: such a claim would likely lead to another bloody and protracted civil war.
If Azrazôr were, in fact, the true King, mused Arnoldir, he would need to show his military might. Though he possessed no known army (as far as he knew) a singular authority in his gaze spoke of a burgeoning power yet to be realized. And if this man was as patient as his supposed forebear King Hyarmendacil I, he might lead Gondor to a lasting peace, and subdue the wild Haradrim again. No one would dare contest his power - except Sauron.
His thoughts turned back to Umbar Baharbêl, the City of the Corsairs, Jewel of the South. When he was a child, plentiful stories were told about a fabulous land of myth, known from ancient times as an exporter of gold, silk, aromatic resins, ebony, ivory, exotic animals, and innumerable slaves, and he was there, actually strolling through the Grand Market upon his arrival. He recognized several creatures in their cages: silver-maned baboons, gazelles, and mongeese, knowing their names from a bestiary - the slimmest volume in his father’s study - and he was reminded of the stuffed tatty-feathered parrot that clung eternally to its perch in Forlong’s hall at Arnach.
The city itself was a festering pot of merchants, tradesmen, robbers, and drunkards, all ruled by the grasping and bellicose Corsairs. Not all of the men he met were part of a mob of rookery dwellers. Some, like Azrazôr and his servants Balkumagan and Pharazagar were well made, strong, courageous, educated, and of civilized manners. They were skillful sailors, and in these men Arnoldir recognized the strain of the Gondorian exiles. Wherever these Corsairs went they pushed their way in to establish their ports. The darker-skinned sailors had a propensity to savagery and cruelty: that was the influence of the Haradrim, a general term for the multitudinous tribes who inhabited the area. They were said to marry any family member they liked, including their mothers.
After wending their way through the Grand Market, he accompanied Azrazôr to his sun-baked house located on the tallest vantage point of the city. Inside, the rooms were scattered with floor cushions, thick carpets, and rush-bottomed chairs, and were filled with many exquisite curios and wall-hangings. It was a perfect example of a mansion of a prosperous man of affairs, as Arnoldir knew him to be. Rumors of his immeasurable fortune were matched only by tales of his keen intellect with matters of trade.
When they first stood face-to-face by the Fleet Gate, the slave lord’s predatory fixation held for several minutes, his eyes locked in a silent, searching scrutiny. Arnoldir began to fear he had underestimated the man’s intuition, yet he made no sign that he saw through the ruse. No, he assured himself, his plan was flawless.
Yet for all his prolonged, careful inspection, Azrazôr only said, “She has a good face, and speaks well.” Then he lowered his mask and smiled. It was not a pretty thing, that smile, the way he curled his lips back over his teeth.
The plan was solid, fool-proof, Arnoldir assured Ivoriel. His sister would be easily passed off as a lady; it would open many doors for the both of them, doors that had been slammed shut in their faces when their father died insolvent. He promised to find her a handsome, rich man with whom she would live her days in comfort and style, and neither of them would want for anything.
The scheme had been divided into three parts, each taking the utmost care, discretion, and a great deal of time and coin to carry out. First there was the dissipated language and calligraphy master in the shabby, dun-coloured robes that, by happenstance, he met in the Scholar’s Tavern in Dol Amroth. It was a simple matter to get the scribe to forge the necessary documentation. This was done by writing on the reverse side of an ancient parchment and gluing it onto an old backing for “support” to hide the tampering. The second step was to sneak the document into the records stored inside the Citadel of Minas Tirith. Here Ivoriel proved herself useful by posing as a flitter-brained scholar who had left her chatelaine somewhere among the stacks of scrolls. After a sufficient amount of time had passed since her visit, one of the librarians of the Archive “discovered” the newly-placed document hidden deep within a wall niche, and presented his find to a Herald. Many of these officers were scrupulous, while others were less skillful and far less scrupulous. To one of the latter sort the librarian went as instructed, and once the document was certified and registered, the third step of the plan was complete.
But the Gondorian did not need to wonder too long as he stood before the masked Southron. His fears were swept aside when Azrazôr declared the terms of the marriage. Being acceptable to them both, the wedding was arranged to be held in one year’s time.
All was settled, as good as done. He had hoped to explore the city’s delights with the pouch of gold given to him, a small token of the munificence of his sister’s future husband, and a promise of grander gifts to come. But early the following morning Balkumagan and Pharazagar led him away from the city on horseback, on the pretext of “showing him the sights outside the city walls.” It was by orders of the King, said his guides.
South of Baharbêl, the seat of the Umbar civilization, they took him, and showed him a range of hills backed by a swampy belt of densely wooded jungle - a treacherous expanse they were careful to skirt by a wide margin. The place was inhabited by a race of recalcitrant barbarians who worshipped rocks and would chop up their enemies for the soup-pot. They were only fit for slavery, said the swordsman Pharazagar.
Then the sky opened up over a broad desert: a vast scrubby wasteland filled with lions, wolves, and other wild creatures. The land was under the control of the Haradrim, although once it had been part of South Gondor. Here and there he marked weathered basalt columns partially buried in the shifting sands along the old Harad road. It began at the Black Gate of Mordor, and ran southward, all the way into Far Harad.
One day he awoke to find his two Umbarrim guides were gone. He realized that he was deserted to fend for himself, then he heard a jabbering of many voices. Outside his tent was a band of nomads, goat herders, he thought they were. He pointed at himself, to the north, and trusted that the language of gold, being spoken everywhere, would assist him.
Where is your sword? one of the bare-chested men asked him in broken Westron.
Back in Lossarnarch he was forbidden to bear arms, such was the civil unrest there, as he explained as best he could. In truth, suspicion of him ran deep and it was too risky to carry a weapon. In this lawless land nobody would care if he took up a sword. He had no time to acquire one in Umbar. Did a Man not need to defend himself?
It was believed by this tribe that there were wizards who transformed themselves into hyenas or snakes and they had the power to enter into a person’s body and suck out his blood, dry him up. Snakes were worshipped. Their banners were everywhere the Haradrim went.
Arnoldir was treated with cold suspicion by some, while others treated him as a curiosity, a novelty. He did not know it at first, so polite and courteous were his hosts, but he was being held captive as their tributary hostage, and a valuable one too: before they departed, Pharazagar and Balkumagan told the Haradrim that he was a wealthy Gondorian noble.
As time passed, a restless energy settled over the tribe’s warriors, who began to long for the spectacle of seeing their captive in combat. They had heard rumours of the doughty men of Gondor and their battle prowess, and they did not like how their women made cow eyes at him. Some began to wonder if he was a valuable asset, or a liability to be discarded.
The boy who handed the sword to him was the first to fall, barely seeing the flash of the blade. Arnoldir swung the heavy scimitar with a terrifying, one-handed velocity that no desert-born warrior could parry. The Haradrim were used to the nimble, dancing style of the South and were utterly unprepared for the brutal force of a man who held a sword as a feather. He smote their spears aside and stepped within their guard; his grip around their necks was as crushing as it had been on the blacksmith’s anvil. Shields splintered, spines snapped; the furtive, flirtatious glances of the women turned to wide-eyed horror as they saw their men dismembered.
By the time the sun dipped below the dunes, the spectacle the tribe had craved was over. The restless energy of the Haradrim was replaced by a dead silence, leaving only Arnoldir standing amid the wreckage thinking how foolish it was to hand a weapon to a man who can bend iron with his bare hands.
