The War of the Ring (4 page)

There is an attack. Endless numbers. Grappling hooks, lad-ders, piled slain. Riders block breaches with stones from high places, and with bodies. Orcs keep on getting in. Riders lose few men, most at breaches. Orcs once got near the horses. Late in the night the (waning?) moon shone fitfully, and the defenders see a boiling throng beneath the wall. Slowly the dead were piling up.

Wild men in steel mesh forced the north breach, and turning south began to drive men from the rampart. Orcs clamber over.

Dawn sees the Men of Rohan giving way all along. The horses are taken away to Helm's Deep, with the King. They make a shieldwall and retreat slowly up towards the Stanrock.

The sun comes out, and then all stare: defenders and attackers.

A mile or so below the Dike, from North to South in a great crescent, they beheld a marvel. Men rubbed their eyes thinking that they dreamed or were dizzy with wounds and weariness.

Where all had been upland and grass-clad slopes, there stood now a wood of great trees. Like beeches they were, robed in withered leaves, and like ancient oaks with tangled boughs, and gnarled pines stood dark among them. The orcs gave back. The Wild Men wavered crying in terrified voices, for they came from the woods under the west sides of the Misty Mountains.

At that moment from the Stanrock a trumpet sounded. Forth rode Theoden with his guard, and a company (of Heorulf's men?). They charged down crashing into the Wild Men and driving them back in ruin over the cliff.

'Wizardry is abroad!' said [?men]. 'What can this betoken?'

'Wizardry maybe,' said Eomer. 'But it seems not to be any device of our enemies. See how dismayed they are.'

A few lines of very rapid and partly illegible notes follow: Their horses were often nightsighted; but the men were not so nightsighted as the orcs. Rohan at a disadvantage in dark. As soon as it grows light they are able to fight. The orcs are no match for the horsemen on the slopes before the Stanrock. Sorties from Helm's Deep and Stanrock. Orcs dive back over wall. It is then that the Wood is seen.

Orcs trapped. Trees grab them. And the wood is full of Herulf's folk. Gandalf has collected the wanderers, [?About] 500. Hardly any of the attackers escape. So hopelessness turns to victory.

Meanwhile Herulf told by Gandalf to hold the .... rode .......

another force sent.... Eodoras. This is now caught between Herulf and the victorious forces of the King. In a battle on the plain

......... terror struck by Aragorn and Gandalf. The host not wishing to rest rides down the fleeing remnant [?back towards]

Isengard.

The sentence beginning 'Meanwhile Herulf told by Gandalf to hold the' might possibly, but very doubtfully indeed, be completed: 'eastern rode [for road] has resisted another force sent towards Eodoras.'

This then was the original story of Helm's Deep, to become far more complex in its development with the emergence of a much more elaborate system of fortification across the mouth of the Deep (the description and narrative in The Two Towers can be followed, incidentally, very precisely in my father's drawing, 'Helm's Deep and the Hornburg', in Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien, no. 26). In this earliest account the 'fastness' consisted only of the sudden natural fall in the land across the mouth of the coomb, fortified with a parapet of great stones; in this there were three 'breaches', a word that my father changed to 'inlets', perhaps to suggest that they had been deliberately made. The nature of the 'hold' of Heorulf on the Stanrock is not indicated; and all the battle of Helm's Deep took place along the line of Helm's Dike.

An isolated scrap of drafting that was not finally used evidently belongs with the original story and may be included here: Aragorn was away behind the defences tending the wound in Snowmane's shoulder, and speaking gentle words to the horse.

As the fragrance of athelas rose in the air, his mind went back to the defence on Weathertop, and to the escape from Moria. 'It is a long journey,' he said to himself. 'From one hopeless corner we escape but to find another more desperate. Yet alas, Frodo, I would be happier in heart if you were with us in this grim place.

Where now do you wander?'

Written on this same page is an outline in which the radical alteration of the story of the assault first enters.

When Eomer and Aragorn reach Dike they are challenged.

Heorulf has left watchers on Dike. They report that the fort of Helm's Gate is manned - mainly older men, and most of the folk of the Westmarch have taken refuge in the Deep. Great store of food and fodder is in the caves.

Then follows story as told above until rescue of King.(17) Eomer and Aragorn decide that they cannot hold Dike in dark (without archers). The Dike is over a mile - 2 miles? -

long. The main host and King go to Stanrock. The horses are led to the Deep. Aragorn and Eomer with a few men (their horses ready in rear) hold the inlets as long as they dare. These they block with stones rolled from the rampart.

The assault on the inlets. Soon drives in as the Orcs clamber up rampart in between. Ladders? Wild men drive in from North Inlet. The defenders flee. Tremendous assault upon the mouth of the Beep where a high stone wall was built. [Added here but at the same time: breastwork crowned with stones. Here G[imli]

speaks his words. Reduce description of Helm's Dike - it is not fortified.] Orcs boil round foot of the Stanrock. Then describe the assault as above.(18) Orcs piling up over the wall. Wild men dimb on the goblins' dead bodies. Moon... men fighting on the wall top.(19) Disadvantage of the Riders. The wall taken and Rohan driven back into the gorge. Dawn. Eomer and Aragorn go to the Stanrock to stand by the King in the Tower.

They see in the sunlight the wonder of the Wood.

Charge of Theoden (Eomer left, Aragorn right). [? With day fortunes change.] Men issue on horses. But the host is vast, only it is disconcerted by the Wood. Almost [? the watchers could]

believe it had moved up the valley as the battle raged.

Trees should come right up to Dike. In the midst out rides Gandalf from the wood. And rides through the orcs as if they were rats and crows.

My father began a new text of the chapter before important elements in the story and in the physical setting had been darified, and as a result this (the first completed manuscript) is an extremely complicated document. It was only after he had begun it that he extended the ride from Eodoras by a further day, and described the great storm coming up out of the East (TT pp. 131-2); and when he began it he had not yet realised that Helm's Dike was not the scene of the great assault: 'what really happened' was that the men manning the Dike were driven in, and the defence of the redoubt was at the line of a great wall further up at the mouth of the gorge - the 'Deeping Wall' - and the Hornburg. At this point in the manuscript the story can be seen changing as my father wrote: in Eomer's reply to Aragorn's question 'Shall we soon find ground where we can turn and stand?' (p. 13) he begins as before with an account of the fortification of the Dike ('crowned with a rampart of great stones, piled in ancient days'), but by the end of his reply he is saying that the Dike cannot be held:

'... But we cannot long defend it, for we have not enough strength. It is near two miles from end to end, and is pierced by two wide breaches. We shall not be able to stand at bay till we get to the Stanrock, and come behind the wall that guards the entrance to the Deep. That is high and strong, for Heorulf had it repaired and raised not long ago.'

Immediately after this the Deeping Stream entered, and the two breaches in the Dike were reduced to one: there 'a stream flows down out of the Deep, and beside it the road runs from Helm's Gate to the valley.'(20) At this stage, however, the final story was still not reached, but follows the outline just given (p. 18):

The King and the main part of his host now rode on to man the Stanrock and Heorulf's wall. But the Westmarchers would not yet abandon the dike while any hope remained of Heorulf's return. Eomer and Aragorn and a few picked men stayed with them guarding the breach; for it seemed to Eomer that they might do great harm to the advance-guard of the enemy and then escape swiftly ere the main strength of the orcs and wild men forced the passage.

The story from this point was built up in a textually extremely complex series of short drafts leading to more finished forms, while earlier portions of the chapter were changed to accommodate the evolving conception of the redoubt as the scene of the battle. To follow this evolution in all its detail would require a very great deal of space, and I record only certain rejected narrative ideas and other particular points of interest.

Before the story (TT pp. 138-40) of the sortie of Eomer and Aragorn from the postern gate emerged, the repulse of the attack on the great gates of the Hornburg was differently conceived: Now with a great cry a company of the wild men moved forward, among them they bore the trunk of a great tree. The orcs crowded about them. The tree was swung by many strong hands, and smote the timbers with a boom. At that moment there was a sudden call. Among the boulders upon the flat and narrow rim beneath the fastness and the brink a few brave men had lain hidden. Aragorn was their leader. 'Up now, up now,'

he shouted. 'Out Branding, out!' A blade flashed like white fire.

'Elendil, Elendil!' he shouted, and his voice echoed in the cliffs.

'See, see!' said Eomer. 'Branding has gone to war at last. Why am I not there? We were to have drawn blades together.'

None could withstand the onset of Aragorn, or the terror of his sword. The orcs fled, the hill-men were hewn down, or fled leaving their ram upon the ground. The rock was cleared. Then Aragorn and his men turned to run back within the gates while there was yet time. His men had passed within, when again the lightning flashed. Thunder crashed. From among the fallen at the top of the causeway three huge orcs sprang up - the white hand could be seen on their shields. Men shouted warning from the gates, and Aragorn for an instant turned. At that moment the foremost of the orcs hurled a stone: it struck him on the helm and he stumbled, falling to his knee. The thunder rolled.

Before he could get up and back the three orcs were upon him.

Here this story was overtaken by that of the sortie from the postern.

In the final manuscript form of this, Aragorn, looking at the gates, added after the words (TT p. 139) 'Their great hinges and iron bars were wrenched and bent; many of their timbers were cracked': 'The doors will not withstand another such battering.' These words were left out of the typescript that followed, but there is nothing in the manuscript to suggest that they should be, and it seems clear that their omission was an error (especially since they give point to Eomer's reply: 'Yet we cannot stay here beyond the walls to defend them').

Gimli's cry as he sprang on the Orcs who had fallen on Eomer: Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu! appears in this form from the first writing of the scene. Years later, after the publication of LR, my father began on an analysis of all fragments of other languages (Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdul, the Black Speech) found in the book, but unhappily before he had reached the end of FR the notes, at the outset full and elaborate, had diminished to largely uninterpretable jottings. Baruk he here translated as 'axes', without further comment; ai-menu is analysed as aya, menu, but the meanings are not clearly legible: most probably aya 'upon', menu 'acc. pl. you'.

A curious point arises in Gimli's remark after his rescue of Eomer during the sortie from the postern gate (TT p. 140): 'Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I left Moria.' This is clearly inconsistent with Legolas' words in 'The Departure of Boromir', when he and Gimli came upon Aragorn beside Boromir's body near Parth Galen:

'We have hunted and slain many Orcs in the woods'; compare also the draft of a later passage (VII.386) where, when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli set out in pursuit of the Orcs, Gimli says: '... those that attacked Boromir were not the only ones. Legolas and I met some away southwards on the west slopes of Amon Hen. We slew many, creeping on them among the trees ...' I do not think that any

'explanation' of this will serve: it is simply an inconsistency never observed.(21)

The 'wild hill-men' at the assault on Helm's Deep came from

'Westfold', valleys on the western side of the Misty Mountains (see p. 8 and note 4), and this application of 'Westfold' survived until a late stage of revision of the manuscript: it was still present in drafting for what became 'The Road to Isengard'.(22) Until the change in application was made, the Westfold Vale was called 'the Westmarch Vale'.