Excerpt from "History of Middle-earth, Vol. XIII: The Rejected Pages". Chapter "The Brolly of the Pelennor Fields":
In
rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires
beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord
of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and
all fled before his face.
All save one. There waiting, silent and
still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax:
Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the
terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dínen.
'You
cannot enter here,' said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. 'Go back
to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that
awaits you and your Master. Go!'
The Black Rider flung back his
hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible
was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders
vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
'Old fool!' he said. 'Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death
when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!' And with that he lifted
high his sword and flames ran down the blade.
Then Lobelia
Sackville-Baggins stepped up to Gandalf. There was a scornful frown on
her brow.
'Get out of the way, old scum,' she snapped at the astonished wizard and
poised herself between Shadowfax and the ghastly mare of the Nazgûl Lord.
Then she raised Rhosorthelian, the Rainscreen, Umbrella of
Westernesse, and prepared herself to club it on the Black
Captain's invisible scalp. With the same fell voice that she used on the Sackville-Baggins property to shoo her servants around she said:
Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! |
And when they heard those words, many a Man of Gondor was reminded of his wife or of his aunt or grandmother at home, and there was much groaning
and bowing of heads on the walls of Minas Tirith, and some brave warriors took their helms off and rubbed their
skulls in memory of suffered pain. And the Ringwraith made no answer but fell
silent, and it seemed that he was struck by the terrifying thought of a long forgotten youth most dreadful, in
ages past when Númenor had still been gleaming under the bright sun. And then, King, Ringwraith, Lord of the Nazgûl, he left the Gate and
vanished.
And the orcs and Variags and Men of Harad, they turned and
fled, for now doubt clutched their hearts, their laughter failed, their
hands shook and their limbs were loosed. The Power that drove them on
and filled them with hate and fury was no match to the memory of what
most they feared, and looking back at the fierceness of the Umbrella of
Westernesse that was wielded to terror by aunt Lobelia, they despaired.
And in that hour the great Battle of the field of Gondor was over; and
not one foe was left within the circuit of the Rammas, and to the land
of the Haradrim came a tale from far off: a rumour of the wrath and
terror of the Sackville-Bagginses.
'What,' said Gandalf deep in thought and wonder, 'is a dwimmerlaik?'
'A bogey I used to scare little Lotho with,' Lobelia said.
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