Alan Sisto

But yeah, it doesn't sound like it would have had too much of an impact on his ability to march.

Speaking of the march, let's look at the two choices that he had to make, right?

Before he left, which route do I take?

The shorter trip of 900 miles, which is mostly off-road, or the 1,500-mile trip that would have been on the roads, which of course he would have taken that path had he had horses, had he had cavalry.

Mm-hmm.

He chooses to take that off-road because he had no horses fit for riding, which is what led Don and I to talk about how the Numenoreans, and therefore the early Gondorians as well, were not exactly known for their cavalry.

Yes, they loved horses.

They could apparently summon them at need via their thoughts, which is pretty cool, but they didn't use them in war, at least not very much.

We do read, "...only by couriers and by bodies of light-armed archers, often not of Numenorean race."

So there are a few things to unpack here.

We talked about the distance that this group, which we had originally thought of as just about the 200 soldiers plus the Sildur and his sons, but it makes sense that there are some noncombatants involved as well.

The distance they could cover each day.

Given that distance and the fact that they were leaving in early September,

Was the other route even a possibility for a non-mounted force, given the timeframe?

And then moving on after that, speaking of not being mounted, why would the Numenoreans not have been an army that uses cavalry?

And I think the answer is obvious, but I want to hear you talk about that because that should be entertaining.

And then finally-

I was really fascinated by this use of light-armed mounted archers, essentially skirmishers.

But the fact that they were often auxiliary forces is even more interesting.

So I want to talk about all three of those things.