The Lord of the Rings: The Bridge of Khazad-dum. The Tale

 

The Tale

They stand silent beside the tomb of Balin. Frodo thinks of Bilbo’s long friendship with the dwarf, and of Balin’s visit to the Shire long ago. ‘In that dusty chamber in the mountains it seemed a thousand years ago and on the other side of the world.’

Finally, they stir and begin to examine the room. There are piles of bones and broken weapons at both doors; some are ‘crooked orc-scimitars with blackened blades.’ There are many recesses cut in the rock of the walls, and in them broken and plundered iron-bound wooden chests. In one they find the remains of a book, slashed and burned and blood-stained. Gandalf lifts it out and begins to try to read it, seeking clues to the fate of Balin’s folk.

It seems to be a record of the colony, stretching over five years and written in many hands and several types of runes. It tells how they first came to Moria through the Dimrill Dale on the eastern side of the mountains and drove the Goblins away, with some loss. Balin sets up his seat in the Chamber of Mazarbul (the Chamber of Records, Gimli translates, and guesses that’s where they are now) and for a while things go well as they explore and re-establish themselves in the Mines. Apparently, they find Durin’s Axe (a mighty relic) and mithril, possibly a vein of ore or even a hidden treasury.

There are many missing pages, but near the end Gandalf reads a passage (probably written by Ori, one of Thorin’s old companions) that on the tenth of November of the fifth year ‘Balin lord of Moria fell’ when he went outside to look into the Mirrormere, shot by an Orc from behind a stone. They killed the Orc, but many more came. The Dwarves retreated into Moria, where they are held besieged. The Orcs take the Bridge and the second hall. They try to leave by the Westgate, but the water is high, and the Watcher in the Water takes Oin (another of Thorin’s Company and Gloin’s older brother, thus Gimli’s uncle).  ‘We cannot get out … We cannot get out. The end comes … drums, drums in the deep … they are coming …’ There is nothing more.

It is grim reading. Gandalf gives the book to Gimli to take to King Dain if he gets the chance. The wizard now knows where they are and which way they should go. They turn to leave the room when they started by an immense, rolling boom that trembles the very stone beneath their feet. It continues to beat doom, doom, and is followed by a shrill horn and harsh cries and the sound of many hurrying feet from the west door. Glamdring and Sting glow with a pale light.

‘They are coming!’ cried Legolas.

‘We cannot get out,’ said Gimli.

They prepare to close the west door, leaving the east door open for their retreat. Before they shut it, Gandalf challenges the attackers and looks out to assess their foes by the light of a brilliant flash of his staff.  ‘There are Orcs, very many of them. And some are large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor.’ And maybe a great cave-troll or two. Boromir heaves the door to and wedges it shut.

But before the Company can get very far the door starts to grind open and a huge arm and shoulder with dark greenish scaly skin forces itself in and a large flat toeless foot is thrust in. Boromir leaps forward and cuts at the arm but his sword is turned aside and falls, its blade notched. To his own surprise, Frodo leaps forward, crying ‘The Shire!’ and stabs the foot with Sting. The foot withdraws, leaving black smoking blood.

But the assault is not over. The door is rammed open and, after a hail of arrows, Orcs come leaping in. But the company’s defense is fierce. Legolas shoots a couple; Gimli ‘hewed the legs from under another that had sprung up on Balin’s tomb’, and Aragorn and Boromir slay many. After thirteen have fallen, the rest flee. Only Sam has been injured, with a scratch along his scalp, but he killed his Orc with a thrust of his Barrow-blade. “A fire was smouldering in his brown eyes that would have made Ted Sandyman step backwards, if he had seen it.’

Gandalf shouts for them to leave, but a huge orc-chieftan comes leaping in, and, dodging and pushing the Men aside, thrusts a spear at Frodo, hitting his right side and hurling him back against the wall. Sam breaks the spear-shaft with a blow, and as the orc draws out it blade, Aragon cleaves its helm and head with a flashing strike. The Orcs that have followed him flee howling. Gandalf shouts, ‘Run for it!’ The drums roll doom, doom!

Aragorn picks up the fallen Frodo and they leave, though Legolas has to drag Gimli away from Balin’s tomb. Aragorn is surprised to find that Frodo is still alive. Boromir wedges the door behind them, and Gandalf tells the Company to run ahead, keeping ever to the right and downward. Aragorn does not want to leave him, but … ‘Do as I say!’ said Gandalf fiercely. ‘Swords are no more use here. Go!’

They grope their way in utter darkness down a long flight of steps and then turn. High above they can see the wizard’s dim light and Frodo hears his muttering voice echoing unintelligibly off the high roof. Suddenly there is a stab of white light, a dull rumble, and a heavy thud. Gandalf comes flying down the step and falls to the ground in their midst. ‘I have done all that I could. But I have met my match and have nearly been destroyed.’ Without further explanation he leads them hastening forward, too tired to even make a light.

They go down a dark descending road for about a mile, Gandalf tapping the way with his staff like a blind man. The drums grow fainter, but still follow them; other than that, there is no other sign of pursuit. At the bottom of the seventh flight of stairs they halt. Gandalf is weary. ‘I must rest here a moment, even if all the orcs ever spawned are after us.’

Gimli asks him what happened up there. Gandalf says he was trying to put a shutting-spell on the door, when suddenly he felt a presence enter the room beyond. Even the orcs are afraid and fall silent. ‘It’ lays hold of the door, and ‘then it perceived me and my spell.’ It begins a counter-spell that almost breaks Gandalf. He has to speak ‘a word of Command’ and that destroys the door. He sees a vague shadow before he is thrown back and the wall collapses. The passage is completely blocked.  Balin is buried deep, and perhaps something else.

The recovering Gandalf asks Frodo how he is doing after his spearing. Frodo says he is bruised and in pain, but otherwise whole. Aragorn confesses his continuing surprise, as that thrust would have skewered a wild boar. Gandalf says that Frodo takes after Bilbo, and the hobbit wonders if he knows or guesses about his mithril shirt.   

They go on, and begin to see a red light before them. The air becomes very hot. They finally reach an archway and Gandalf peers through. They are now in the Second Hall; they only have to cross the Bridge, go up a stair, and find the Gates, not a quarter of a mile away. The cavernous Hall is split by a fiery fissure, but they have come out on the right side of it; if they had come the way they had first meant to go they would have been trapped.

But the drums suddenly roll out doom, doom again, and there is a tumult of horns, hurrying feet, and yells. There is a group of what seems to be hundreds of orcs on the other side of the chasm. They shoot arrows across but cannot pass the fire. ‘Boromir laughed. ‘They did not expect this,’ he said. ‘The fire has cut them off. We are on the wrong side!’

But now the Company must pass over the Bridge of Khazad-dum, a slender span that has neither curb nor rail with only room for a line in single file. It is the last ancient defense of the Dwarves. Gandalf has Gimli lead the way, with Pippin and Merry next. The drums roll, doom, doom. Legolas turns to shoot an arrow, but gives a sudden cry of fear and dismay. There are two trolls putting gangways of stone across the gap, but it is not that. The ranks of orcs part, and ‘a dark form, of man-shape maybe, but greater; and a power and a terror seemed to be in it and to before it.’ It leaps over the flames which kindle its streaming mane. It carries ‘a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire’ and a whip of many thongs.

‘Ai! Ai!’ wailed Legolas. ‘A Balrog! A Balrog has come!’

‘Durin’s Bane!’ Gimli drops his axe and covers his face. ‘A Balrog!’ mutters Gandalf. Now he understands what he’s been facing and must face again. And he is already weary.

The Balrog races towards them and the orcs come streaming over the stone gangways. Boromir raises his horn and sounds it in challenge and defiance, its ringing, bellowing call halting the enemies for a moment. Then they surge forward again. Gandalf commands the others across the bridge; this is a foe beyond any of them. He stands alone on the bridge, Aragorn and Boromir stopping side by side at the end of the span, and the others just inside the doorway at the hall’s end, unable to leave their leader to face the enemy alone. The Balrog reaches the bridge.

Gandalf stands, staff in one hand and the sword Glamdring in the other. The Balrog halts, facing him, ‘the shadow about it reached like two vast wings.’ It cracks its whip and fire comes from its nostrils. But the wizard stands firm.

‘You cannot pass … I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.’

The flame in the Balrog seems to die, but its darkness grows. Gandalf stands before its towering height and wings of shadow, ‘like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.’ The Balrog brings its sword down, but Glamdring parries the blow, the Balrog’s weapon flies into molten fragments, and the creature staggers back. Gandalf straightens himself. ‘You cannot pass!’

With a bound the Balrog leaps onto the Bridge. Aragorn and Boromir jump forward to aid Gandalf, but at that moment the wizard brings down his staff with a cry, breaking both staff and bridge. The Balrog plunges into the abyss, but even as it falls it curls its whip around Gandalf’s knees. The wizard tries vainly to grab at the broken stone of the bridge but slides in after his foe. His last words come up: ‘Fly, you fools!’ Then he is gone.

The company stands rooted in horror. Aragorn and Boromir come back off the bridge even as its last fragments fall. Aragorn takes up the leadership of the Fellowship and urges them on; they must obey Gandalf’s last command. Frodo finds himself weeping as they stumble on in the dark. The drums roll doom, doom, doom behind them, mournful now and slow.

They run forward into growing light under they reach the broken doors of the Eastgate. A guard of orcs is crouching in the shadows there, but Aragorn in his wrath strikes the leader down and the others flee. The Company runs through the gates and past the threshold of Moria. ‘Thus, at last, they came beyond hope under the sky and felt the wind on their faces.’

They do not stop until they are a bowshot from the walls. It is just an hour after noon and golden sunlight lays about them there in the Dimrill Dale. They can still see the Gates behind them, a thin trail of smoke rising from within. They can still hear the drums in the deeps.

‘Grief at last wholly overcame them, and they wept long: some standing and silent, some cast upon the ground. Doom, doom. The drum-beats faded.’

 

[I don’t know about you, but I’m spent. I’m going to leave the ‘Bits and Bobs’ section until tomorrow, or maybe later this evening.]