Watching the enemy bustle about outside the Black Gate, Sauron paid little heed to those insects.
Though little of his strength had returned, and the armies at his command held no overwhelming advantage.
His servants, for instance, did not outnumber the enemy outside the gate ten to one.
But the high wall defending Mordor was itself imbued with dark magic, giving it a terrifying defensive strength.
Even powerful trebuchets could do little damage to it, and Sauron had stationed heavy forces both atop the wall and behind it.
They would guard against enemies climbing up scaling ladders.
Cunning as he was, he had even hidden troops in ambush beneath the shadows of the Ash Mountains.
In his eyes, the ragtag armies outside could never breach Morgulon, even if their numbers doubled.
And so the Lord of Mordor paid no attention whatsoever to the challengers outside his gate.
In fact, under Sauron's rule, that towering, sprawling black wall had fallen only once.
That had been during the War of the Last Alliance.
Sauron had suffered a humiliating defeat in the Battle of Dagorlad, and his minions had fled at the mere sight of Gil-galad's spear, Aeglos, and Elendil's sword, Narsil.
Filled with fear, they lacked the strength to face the allied Elves and Men head-on.
Thus, Sauron had simply abandoned the defense of the Black Gate and shut himself inside his last stronghold, Barad-dûr.
And that had been the only time it had fallen.
The other occasion, however, had been Sauron's deeply shameful submission during the Second Age.
For those he had submitted to were the Númenóreans he hated and envied.
At the time, King Ar-Pharazôn had possessed such immense power that Sauron could not possibly oppose him.
In a sense, the Black Gate had not fallen at all. Sauron had