Bolg

Son of Azog

Bolg was the son of Azog, the Orc-chieftain of Moria who murdered Thrór and was beheaded by Dáin Ironfoot at the Battle of Azanulbizar in T.A. 2799. Bolg outlived his father by a hundred and forty-two years and was still fit to lead an army at the end of it, which says something either about the lifespan of the greater Orcs or about how young he was when his father died. Where he was during the War of the Dwarves and Orcs is not told. When the histories pick him up again he is lord of the goblins of Mount Gundabad, the ancient stronghold at the northern end of the Misty Mountains that the Orcs had held since the days of Angmar and that the Dwarves regarded with particular bitterness, since Durin had awakened there.

The gathering of the North

The Orcs of the mountains had been slow to recover from the slaughter of the Dwarf-war, and the passes were quieter than they had been for centuries when Thorin crossed them in 2941. Two things changed that in a single summer. The company of Thorin was captured under the High Pass and escaped by killing the Great Goblin in his own hall, and a few nights later Gandalf burned a pack of Wargs and their goblin allies out of a pine-wood on the eastern slopes. The goblins of the Misty Mountains had two grievances and wanted blood, and Bolg was the chieftain to whom they turned. Then, in the autumn, news came east that the dragon Smaug was dead and the treasure of the Mountain lay open, and grievance became opportunity. Bolg called the goblins together at Gundabad, tribe by tribe and hold by hold, and set them marching under the mountains and through the wild with a host of Wargs beside them and a cloud of bats overhead. He was not the only one to think of the hoard: the Elves of Mirkwood and the Men of the Lake were already camped before Erebor, and Dáin was marching from the Iron Hills. Bolg's plan was to arrive while they were still quarrelling.

The Battle of Five Armies

He came very close. On the day the Dwarves of the Iron Hills stood facing the Elves and Men across the valley, with Thorin shut in the Mountain refusing to yield, Gandalf's shout stopped the first blows, and the goblins were already coming over the spurs of the Mountain in the shadow of their bats. The three armies that had been about to fight each other formed a single line instead. The goblins broke into the valley from both sides and fought all day, and the numbers were with them; the Elves held the western spur, the Dwarves and Men the eastern, and the goblins swarmed up both while the Wargs howled below.

In the afternoon Thorin came out of the Mountain with his twelve companions, threw down the wall he had built, and charged, and the whole allied line rallied and drove into the goblins behind him. That was when Bolg committed his reserve. His bodyguard were the largest Orcs of the North, armed with steel scimitars, and they closed on Thorin's small band and cut it off from any help. Thorin was struck down there, and Fíli and Kíli died defending him.

What ended the battle was neither Dwarf nor Elf. The Eagles came first and cleared the mountainsides, and then Beorn came down out of the west in the shape of a great bear. He went through the goblins to where Thorin lay and carried him out of the fight, then came back and broke Bolg's bodyguard as if they had been straw. Bolg himself was seized and crushed to death. When the goblins saw their chieftain die they broke and were hunted across the valley, and three parts of the goblin warriors of the North were killed on that day.

Legacy

Bolg's defeat did for the northern Orcs what Azanulbizar had done a century and a half before: it emptied the mountains for a generation. For decades after the battle the passes were safe to travel and the Wargs were not seen east of the mountains, and the Dwarves of Erebor and the Men of Dale prospered under Dáin and Bard with no enemy near at hand. Bolg was the last named chieftain of the Misty Mountain goblins, and the line of Azog ended with him.

Crushed by Beorn in bear-shape at the Battle of Five Armies, T.A. 2941; his death broke the goblin host.