Chapter 386: War Erupts
On the waters of the Gulf of Lune, the corsairs and the Elves faced off at a distance.
Elven warriors stood on the decks of their steamships with bows in hand.
At a single order, the Elves drew and loosed, their arrows flying with deadly precision into the corsair ranks. These were veterans, and not a shaft went wide.
When the first rain of arrows fell, a swathe of corsairs in the foremost ships dropped at once, their screams carrying over the water.
The Captain of the Haven roared in fury and ordered the cannons to smash the Elven ships to pieces.
What followed left him both shocked and enraged. The Elven ships were built of metal, solid as fortresses, and they were more than twice as fast as the corsair vessels. In moments, they widened the gap, and the cannonballs could not even reach them.
The corsairs could only chase in their wake, choking on steam and spray.
They could not make sense of these strange Elven ships. They were built of steel and yet did not sink, swifter than the corsairs' great warships, and they carried neither oar nor sail. Instead, a single stack rose from each vessel, breathing out steam and pale mist without cease.
And so the battle raged across the Gulf of Lune.
The Elves relied on speed, circling and harrying, refusing to be pinned down. The corsairs, meanwhile, lashed the Orcs at the oars with whips, cursing them to row harder, while the cannons thundered again and again.
Lindon had long been emptied by the westward sailing, and there were not many Elves left. The Grey Havens, Harlond, and Forlond together held only a few thousand, with only a few hundred ships.
Against more than a thousand enemy vessels and tens of thousands of corsairs, the difference in strength was brutal.
Even with the steamships' speed, some were inevitably surrounded, and once a ship took repeated hits, its hull was damaged and its decks torn apart. Beautiful lines became ragged wounds, the ships listing and trembling as if they might break.
The corsairs paid dearly as well. Flaming arrows struck their wooden hulls, and the ships caught fire at once. Some corsairs, frantic to escape the flames, threw themselves into the sea.
An instant later, an Elven arrow took them through the heart, and they became food for the deep.
War spread across the sea, firelight climbing into the sky, screams rising without end.
Even as their losses mounted under the Elves' furious resistance, the corsair captain showed no hesitation. He ordered them to destroy every Elven ship at any cost, even if it meant trading ships one for one, even if it meant suicide charges.
Then the Elves felt true dread.
The corsairs had lured in a host of enormous sea-born monsters.
They were sharks the size of ships, twenty or thirty metres long—warped into something vile by Sauron's corruption. The corsairs had fed them on corpses until they sank fully into darkness. Now they struck from below with their massive bodies, ramming hulls, overturning vessels, and devouring anyone who fell into the water.
And they did not care who they ate.
Elf or corsair, once you hit the sea, you were swallowed whole.
Now the Elves had to face cannonfire above and giant sharks below, and the battle turned more and more against them.
Just as the Elven ships were about to be fully encircled, the air began to crack with faint popping sounds. Figures appeared one after another on both Elven ships and corsair ships.
The moment they arrived, they moved with brutal efficiency, wands flashing. Corsairs were blasted off their feet, small boats were blown apart, and spells struck down into the water to hit the sharks.
They were the hundred Aurors Kael had dispatched to reinforce the Grey Havens, Harlond, and Forlond. They had been defending the harbours, and the moment Galdor called for support, they Apparated straight onto the ships.
They had believed that with steamships more advanced than any wooden craft, the Elves could at least rely on speed to hold the line.
No one expected the corsairs to bring giant sharks, evil creatures that could attack from below and capsize ships.
With enemies striking from above and below, the Elven fleet was driven into a deadly bind. Galdor, directing the battle at sea, called at once for Auror reinforcements.
Aurors blinked from ship to ship across the water, and some pulled out broomsticks, striking from the air. One boat after another was hit by Bombarda and blown into fragments, pirates and all.
Even the large corsair warships could not withstand them. Under combined spells, ships were sunk, overturned, or set ablaze.
The sharks lurking below were killed one by one as well.
The beasts were not clever. The scent of blood drove them into a frenzy, so whenever a corsair ship went down and men splashed into the water, the sharks swarmed to tear and devour. That frenzy gave the Aurors the opening they needed to destroy them together.
Under the Aurors' relentless assault, the corsair fleet was broken. Blood stained the Gulf of Lune red, severed limbs floated amid the waves, and huge shark carcasses drifted belly-up.
Some corsairs who fell into the water and somehow did not die at once still struggled wildly, only to be swallowed by waves and currents.
The Corsairs were terrified by the Aurors' sudden appearance. Watching ship after ship sink, they fled in a panicked mass toward the strait, even jamming and colliding in their desperation.
A dozen small boats were overturned by larger ships, dragging hundreds of corsairs down at the mouth of the strait.
In the end, the ships that escaped the Gulf of Lune into open sea were reduced to just over twenty large vessels and a few hundred small craft, their manpower cut by two-thirds.
It was a catastrophic loss.
Once the corsairs broke into open water, the Aurors did not give chase. Instead, they turned first to rescuing the Elves.
Yet despite their losses, the corsairs did not withdraw. Out beyond the coastline, they spread into a fan-shaped blockade across the sea-lanes, as if they were waiting for something.
At the very moment the sea-battle raged in the Gulf of Lune, Mordor's armies surged forth as well. Hosts poured out through the Morannon and from Cirith Ungol, striking at Rohan and Gondor.
To the south of Mordor, the Haradrim moved in concert, and to the north, the Easterlings marched too, pushing west alongside Mordor's armies.
Mordor, the Easterlings, and the Haradrim fielded a host said to number a million, split into several great armies: one against Gondor, one against Rohan, one against Lothlórien and Mirkwood, and one turning north to attack Dale and the Lonely Mountain.
At the same time, in Angmar in the northern reaches of the Misty Mountains, an Orc host of more than a hundred thousand had gathered in silence, commanded by the Witch-king of Angmar.
With foul sorcery, the Witch-king summoned countless evil spirits, driving them into the bodies of the dead buried beneath that land. Corpse-wights clawed their way up through soil and stone.
Tens of thousands of wights rose like an army that could not die.
At the Witch-king's command, under southward-drifting clouds, they began their march into Eriador.
War swept Middle-earth once more, and this time it was more terrifying than ever.