"In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgul, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dinen.

'You cannot enter here,' said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. 'Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!'

The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.

'Old fool!' he said. 'Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!' And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade."

Now that I've set the tone...

The thing about evil is that it tends to do stuff that brings about its own fall, like ignore a Hobbit sneaking up on it, or putting all of its power into an object that can be destroyed in order to better dominate everything.

Could Gandalf have fought the Witch-King? Considering he had already dealt with a Balrog, I would say yes. Considering he fought the Nine to a standstill before doing that, I would say yes. *If* it had come down to it, Gandalf could have prevented Sauron's greatest servant from entering Minas Tirith, and in fact did just that without having to resort to blows. The Witch-King would've escaped before any final defeat, more than likely, because it was not his fate to be killed by Gandalf. Gandalf's job wasn't to do all the work for Men, but to unite them and inspire them to fight against Sauron. When you get to the Appendices, you'll see that the Witch-King was smart enough to run from Glorfindel some 1100 years prior (give or take). The same Glorfindel, who Two Ages prior, slew a Balrog while dying himself. Which leads to my next point...

If you get into the History of Middle-Earth series, you'll get alot of info, maybe more than you could've asked for. Even disregarding that, however, you can conclude from LotR and the Silmarillion how an Elf could stand a chance against a Balrog.

1.) Elves, though incarnated, are similar in nature to the Ainur (of which Balrogs are corrupted Maiar). Neither Ainur nor Elves exist on a static scale, each occupying a rather wide spectrum proper for their kind.

2.) The particular Elves who fought and slew Balrogs (slew at the cost of their own lives when at all, mind you), stood toe-toe-toe with them, or even stabbed Morgoth himself in the foot seven times were nobility among Elves who had been born and raised in Aman, the Blessed Realm, in the Light of the Two Trees. They were nurtured on a continent as yet untouched by Melkor's influence, blessed by its inhabitants and bathed in a light of a potency and virtue that just doesn't exist anymore. They were the best of the best, with the best techniques for metalurgy and smithcraft to be found among the Elves.

3.) Sauron, had he regained his Ring, would've been *more* powerful than he had been at the end of the Second Age with his Ring. Why? Because spirits can grow in strength, just like bodies. Otherwise he should've been at exactly the same power. There's no reason the spiritual strength of the Noldor would not grow in Aman with their physical strength.

So we have the best of the best of a group of Elves who are already stronger and greater warriors than the standard Elf in Beleriand, having proven their hardiness by surviving a perilous trek across an ice-bridge in terrible cold where many were lost along the way, after having been nurtured in a land that hadn't been influenced by Morgoth.


More firmly on the subject of the Witch-King, back to how Merry's sword could afflict him. The sword was one of those retrieved from the Barrows Downs by Tom Bombadil, "work of Westernesse, wound about with spells for the bane of Mordor." It was forged in Arnor in the years when their chief foe was none other than the realm of Angmar and its Witch-King (who was already a Nazgul, just to be clear. He had just come North to unite Arnor's enemies against them and destroy the realm). Then there's the fact that while the sword *struck* the Witch-King, like Noldor slaying Balrogs, it didn't survive.