The Lord of the Rings: Helm’s Deep (Part Three)

 

The Tale

A slow time of waiting passes, as the forces of Isengard advance silently, their torches in the darkness showing their progress. Suddenly there are yells and screams and battle-cries from the Dike. The torches of the Orcs come streaming through the breach there but are quickly scattered and vanish. Men on horseback come riding up the ramp to the gate of the Hornburg: the rearguard have been driven in. They have spent all their arrows and filled the Dike with dead Orcs. ‘But it will not halt them long. Already they are scaling the bank at many points, thick as marching ants. But we have taught them not to carry torches.’

It is past midnight and utterly dark. Suddenly the night lights up with a blinding flash of lightning. Watchers on the ramparts and can see the land below them ‘boiling and crawling’ with dark figures, with hundreds and hundreds more swarming over the Dike. Thunder rolls in the valley and rain comes lashing down. The forces of Isengard let loose a rain of arrows that clatter off the battlements, but the forces inside answer with neither shot nor challenge. The Orcs and Dunlendings are momentarily baffled when they reach the wall, but with a blare of brazen trumpets they advance up the causeway to the gates, a group of the largest Men and Orcs bringing two huge trees as battering rams. Then the arrows fly from the forces of Rohan.

The attackers waver, break, and flee, always returning and breaking again, but getting closer every time. Finally, they reach the gate. They hold their shields above them like a roof against the arrows and stones hurled from the wall.  Eomer and Aragorn, standing together on the Deeping Wall, hear the assault on the gate, and run to the defense, gathering a body of swordsmen as they go. Through a small postern door at the side of the gate they take a narrow path, and leap out, leading their force into an attack on the rams.

The rammers drop the trees in dismay and flee, along with the Orc archers who have been covering them. The attackers are swept away. The rain has stopped now, and the stars and moon are glimmering. Aragorn and Eomer examine the Gates. They have come none too soon; the hinges and iron bars are twisted and bent and some of the beams are cracked. But they cannot stay here and defend the Gates. They must go inside to brace them there.

As they turn to go some dozen Orcs (who have been playing possum) leap up silently to attack them from behind. Two of them trip Eomer and are on top of him. But from the shadows springs a small dark figure, crying ‘Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!’ [‘The axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!’] An axe swings. The two Orcs fall headless, and the rest flee. Eomer struggles to his feet as Aragorn runs back to his aid.

Once safe inside, Eomer thanks Gimli for his unexpected aid. ‘Oft the unbidden guest proves the best company.’ Gimli replies that he joined them to stretch his legs. No thanks are necessary; he enjoyed himself. ‘Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I left Moria.’

He rejoins Legolas on the wall and tells of his two kills. ‘Two?’ said Legolas. ‘I have done better, though now I must grope for spent arrows; all mine are gone. Yet I make my tale twenty at the least. But that is only a few leaves in the forest.’

Bits and Bobs

‘Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!’ is the ancient battle-cry of the Dwarves and is indeed the one part of the secret language of the Dwarves, Khuzdul, that is known to other races, having been heard on battlegrounds throughout the history of Middle-earth. The language was said to have been taught to them by Aule, their Valar sub-creator, and had changed little over the ages.

Gimli’s statement that he’d hewn nothing but wood since Moria is inaccurate since he and Legolas slew Orcs at Parth Galen where the Fellowship was broken.

Legolas and Gimli here begin their rather grim banter concerning a running count of their kills during the battle. Book Legolas has to scrounge for arrows, as opposed to Movie Legolas who seems to have an inexhaustible quiver.

The name of Eomer’s sword, Guthwine, used here as a rally-cry, means ‘battle-friend’ in Old English. Legolas uses the word ‘tale’ in the sense of ‘tally’, a counting or reckoning.