The Mouth of Sauron

A Black Númenórean

The man who called himself the Mouth of Sauron was a renegade of the Black Númenóreans, the descendants of those Men of Westernesse who had settled the southern coasts of Middle-earth in the Second Age and given their allegiance to Sauron. He was said to have entered the service of the Dark Tower when it was first raised again, that is, after Sauron declared himself openly in Mordor in T.A. 2951, and by the end of the Age he had risen to be Lieutenant of Barad-dûr, the highest of Sauron's living servants after the Nazgûl. Because of his cunning he stood high in the Dark Lord's favour, and he had learned a great deal of sorcery and something of Sauron's own mind. He was crueller than any Orc. His own name he had forgotten, or so it was reported; he was simply the voice through which his master spoke.

The parley at the Morannon

On the morning of 25 March 3019 the Host of the West, seven thousand strong under Aragorn, Gandalf, Éomer and Imrahil, drew up before the Black Gate and its heralds called on Sauron to come out and answer for his crimes. After a long silence the Gate opened, and an embassy came out: a small company of black-harnessed soldiers, and at their head a tall rider on a huge black horse, in black robes and a tall black helm, with no face visible but a mouth. He announced himself as the Mouth of Sauron and demanded to know who among the rabble had the right to treat with him. He sneered at Aragorn's claim of descent from Elendil and at the ragged Rangers about him, and mocked Gandalf as a wandering meddler.

Then he showed his tokens: the mithril coat that Frodo had worn, the sword of Samwise, and a grey Elven cloak from Lothlórien. He said that the spy who bore them had been taken, and that his life depended on the answer the Captains gave. His terms were these: the West would withdraw beyond the Anduin and swear never to bear arms against Mordor again; all the lands east of the river would be Sauron's for ever; the lands west of the Anduin as far as the Misty Mountains would pay tribute and be forbidden to build walls; and Isengard would be rebuilt as the seat of a lieutenant of Sauron, which the Mouth made plain would be himself. The Captains were shaken, for the tokens seemed to prove that the Ring-bearer had failed. Gandalf, who had said nothing, stepped forward, took the tokens from him, and refused every term. He would treat for the return of the prisoner, and the Mouth might take back to his master the answer that a herald was sent to bargain, not to dictate. The ambassador's face twisted with rage and fear, and he shouted that he had been threatened under a flag of truce; then he wheeled his horse and fled back through the Gate, and the trumpets of Mordor sounded the attack.

Fate

What became of the Mouth of Sauron is not told. Within hours the Ring went into the fire, Barad-dûr fell, and the armies of Mordor were scattered or swallowed by the earth; the living Men among Sauron's servants who survived fled or surrendered, and it may be that the Lieutenant of the Tower perished in the ruin of the fortress he had served. His parley remains the single occasion on which Sauron treated openly with his enemies, and its terms, dictated in the moment of Sauron's supposed triumph, show what the mastery of Middle-earth by the Dark Lord would have meant.

Fled back through the Black Gate when Gandalf rejected his terms; not seen again, and presumably lost in the fall of Barad-dûr.