Wargs

What the texts say

Wargs are wolves, but wolves of a size, intelligence and malice beyond any natural pack, and they are always found in the company of Orcs. The Hobbit introduces them in the foothills east of the Misty Mountains, where Thorin's company, having escaped the Goblins by the back door of the mountain, stumble into a clearing that the wolves use as a meeting-place. Hundreds gather under a great grey chieftain. They have a language of their own, harsh and terrible to hear, and Gandalf understands enough of it to learn that the wolves have arranged to meet the Goblins that night and raid the villages of the Woodmen together. The Goblins are late, having been delayed by the deaths of the Great Goblin's guards, and the wolves settle to besiege the trees in which the dwarves have taken refuge. Gandalf pelts them with burning pine-cones, the Goblins arrive and set the trees alight, and only the coming of the Eagles saves the company. The wolves themselves are scattered by the fire, and several burn.

The same wolves are said to be the mounts of the Goblins in war, and at the Battle of Five Armies they run at the flanks of the Goblin army, so that the Goblins come as much on wolf-back as on foot. Beorn, who hated Wargs as much as he hated Goblins, is later said to have made the lands about the Carrock safe from them.

In The Fellowship of the Ring the Wargs appear west of the Mountains, which Aragorn regards as a sign of how far Sauron's power has grown. The Fellowship, turned back from Caradhras, is surrounded in Hollin on a moonlit night by a great pack under a chieftain who is shot by Legolas as it leaps. Gandalf, with fire and a spell, sets the treetops ablaze and the wolves are driven off, a dozen or more killed. In the morning no bodies are found, only the arrows of Legolas lying unharmed on the ground, and Gandalf takes this as proof that these were no ordinary hunting wolves, and that the Fellowship must go through Moria at once.

The last Wargs of the story are those of Isengard. Saruman's host that fought at the Fords of Isen and rode against Helm's Deep included wolf-riders, Orcs mounted on great wolves, who were used for speed and for hunting down fugitives; the riders of Rohan fought them in the retreat from the Fords and in the valley of the Deep.

What is implied

The texts never say where Wargs come from or whether they are natural animals. Several details suggest they are not. They speak, and their speech is understood by a Wizard. They plan raids with the Goblins as equals rather than as hunting-dogs. Their bodies vanish from the field in Hollin, which the narrator and Gandalf both treat as uncanny. The Hobbit calls them evil wolves rather than merely wild ones, and Aragorn's remark that the Warg howls worse than the Orc hints that they are the more dreadful of the two allies. It is tempting to connect them with the werewolves of Sauron in the First Age, wolves inhabited by evil spirits, and the vanishing corpses in Hollin would fit such a reading; but the connection is nowhere stated, and the Atlas records it as inference only.

Equally, whether the Wargs of the Third Age were bred by Sauron, as Morgoth bred the dragons, or were simply the wolves of the Wild grown large and wicked under the Shadow, is not said. Their name is a word of the Northmen for an outlaw's wolf, which suggests that the Woodmen and Rohirrim regarded them as a distinct kind of animal, not as spirits.

Fate

With the fall of Isengard and the overthrow of Sauron the Wargs lose their masters. Nothing is recorded of them in the Fourth Age.

Great wolves, grey or black, far larger than the wolves of later times; they can carry an Orc at speed and drag down a horse. They see well by night and their howling is a signal to one another over long distances. Fire is their chief terror: they will not approach a burning tree and the smell of their singed fur is remembered by Bilbo.

Wargs hunt in packs under chieftains, hold moots in forest clearings, and negotiate with the Goblins as allies rather than servants. They have a spoken language. Their alliance with the Orcs is one of mutual convenience: the Orcs plunder and the wolves eat.

Not told. They are wolves of the Wild in league with the Goblins of the Misty Mountains, and later in the service of Isengard and Mordor. Their ancestry, and whether they descend from the werewolves of the First Age, is left open.

Scattered by the Eagles at the Carrock, by fire in Hollin, and by the Rohirrim at Helm's Deep; not mentioned after the War of the Ring.