The War of the Ring (71 page)

and hope. But now our salvation, if any can be achieved, does not rest upon our deeds of arms, yet it may be aided by them.

Not by prudence, as I say, of the lesser wars of Men. But by a boldness, even a rashness, that in other case would be folly. For our hope is still, though daily it grows fainter, that Sauron has not recovered the Ring, and while that is so he will be in doubt and fear lest we have it. The greater our rashness the greater his fear, and the more will his eye and thought be turned to us and not elsewhere where his true peril is. Therefore I say we should follow up this victory as soon as we may and move East with all such force as we have.'

'Yet still there must be prudence,' said Imrahil. 'There is scarce a man or horse alive among us that is not weary, even those that are not sick or hurt. And we learn that there is an army left unfought upon our north flank. We cannot wholly denude the city, or it will burn behind us.'

'True enough, I would not counsel it,' said Gandalf. 'Indeed for my design the force me lead East need not be great enough for any assault in earnest upon Mordor, so long as it is great enough to challenge a battle.'

Turning now to the primary manuscript of the chapter, this is itself a massive complex of rejected and retained material, but it cannot be satisfactorily separated into distinct 'layers', and I shall treat it as a single entity, referring to it as 'the manuscript'.

The opening achieves almost word for word the form in RK pp 148 - 9, beginning 'The morning came after the day of battle' and continuing as far as Gimli s remark to Legolas: It is ever so with all the things that Men begin: there is a frost in spring, or a blight in summer, and they fail of their promise.' A servant of Imrahil then guided them to the Houses of Healing, where they found Merry and Pippin in the garden, 'and the meeting of those friends was a merry one.' The narrative then moves directly into the debate: as in RK

(p. 154) Imrahil and Eomer went down from the city to the tents of Aragorn, and there conferred with Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrohir and Elladan. 'They made Gandalf their chief and prayed him to speak first his mind'; and as in RK he began by citing the words of Denethor before his death, bidding his listeners ponder the truth of them. But now he went on, following and condensing a passage in the draft just given:

'The peoples of the West are diminished; and it is long since

. your rule retreated and left the wild peoples to themselves; and they do not know you, and neither love nor fear will long restrain them. And you have an Enemy of great power and malice, who fills all their hearts with hatred, and governs and directs that hatred, so that they are no longer like waves that roll at whiles against your walls to be:thrown back one by one: they are united, and they are rising as a great tide to engulf you.

'The Stones of Seeing do not lie, and not even the Lord of Barad-dur can make them do so ...'

The remainder of Gandalf's speech, with the interventions of Imrahil,(16) Aragorn, and Eomer, was achieved through a series of drafts that need scarcely be considered more closely, except for one version of Gandalf's reply to Eomer (RK pp. 155 - 6). In this, after saying that the Dark Lord, not knowing whether they themselves possessed the Ring, would look for those signs of strife that would inevitably arise among them if they did, Gandalf goes on:

'Now it is known to you that I have set the Ring in peril.

From Faramir we learn that it passed to the very borders of Mordor before this assault began, maybe on the first day of the darkness. And, my lords, it went by the may of Morgul. Slender indeed is the hope that the bearer can have escaped the perils of that way, of the horrors that wait there; still less is the hope that even if he comes through them to the Black Land he can pass there unmarked. Six days have gone, and hourly I watch the signs with great dread in my heart.'

'What are these signs that you loot for, an enemy ... you on our ...' asked Imrahil.

'Darkness,' said Gandalf. 'That is my dread. And darkness began, and therefore for a while I felt a despair deeper than Denethor. But the darkness that is to be feared is not such as we have endured: it would need no clouds in the air; it would begin in our hearts feeling afar the power of the Ringlord, and grow till by sunlight or moonlight or under heaven or under roof all would seem dark to us. This darkness was but a device to make us despair and it has, as such deceits will, ..... our enemy. The next sign is strife among the lords.'

A following draft reaches Gandalf's argument as it appears in RK, but here he adds to those signs that Sauron will have observed: 'He may also have seen in the Stone the death of Denethor, and since he judges all by himself he may well deem that a first sign of strife among his chief foes.' In the same text, after saying that 'we must at all costs keep his eye from his true peril', he adds: 'A single regiment of orcs set about Orodruin could seal our ruin' (in a subsequent version: 'A mere handful of orcs at watch on Orodruin would seal our doom').

At the end of the debate, following Aragorn's words (RK p. 158) 'no gates will endure against our Enemy if men desert them', an initial draft has a development that was not pursued:

Then even as they debated a rider came in search of Eomer.

'Lord,' he said, 'word has come from Anorien from the north-roads. Theoden King, when we rode hither, left men behind to watch the movements of enemy at Amon Din. They send word that there has been war far away in the Wold, and thence come strange tidings. For some say [the very woods have] that wild things of the woods have fallen on the orcs and driven them into the River and the rapids of Sarn Gebir. But the army that was on the road has heard this news, and also of our victory here, and is afraid, and is even now hastening back.'

'Ha!' said Eomer. 'If they dare to assail us they will rue it. If they seek to fly past they shall be smitten. We must cut off this finger of the Black Hand ere it is withdrawn.'

The numbers of those who should set out from Minas Tirith were differently conceived, for 'the great part of these should be horsed for swifter movement' (in contrast to RK: 'the great part of this force should be on foot, because of the evil lands into which they would go'): Eomer leading three thousand of the Rohirrim, Aragorn five hundred horse and fifteen hundred foot, and Imrahil a thousand horse and fifteen hundred foot; and there was no suggestion that any force of the Rohirrim were sent to 'waylay the West Road against the enemy that was in Anorien' (RK p. 158). The manuscript was however subsequently corrected and the muster as enumerated in RK introduced, with three thousand of the Rohirrim left behind.

After the words 'And he drew forth Branding and held it up glittering in the sun' (which is where in RK 'The Last Debate' ends), the original chapter then continues with a transition back to Legolas and Gimli: 'While the great captains thus debated and laid their designs, Legolas and Gimli made merry in the fair morning high up in the windy circles of Minas Tirith.' Legolas' sight of the gulls flying up Anduin follows, and the emotion that they stirred in him, are described in much the same words as in RK; but the conversation that follows is altogether different. At this stage no account had been given of the Paths of the Dead; in the outline at the beginning of this chapter (p. 397) my father had suggested that the story would be told 'at feast of victory in Minas Tirith', and had mentioned that in tunnels under the mountains the company saw the 'skeleton in armour of Bealdor son of Brego', but that except for the dark and a feeling of dread they met no evil.

There is at first both a draft and a more finished version; I give the latter, since it follows the former very closely.

'... No peace shall I have again in Middle-earth!'

'Say not so!' said Gimli. 'There are countless things still to see there, and great work to be done. But if all the Fair Folk, that are also wise, take to the Havens, it will become a duller world for those that are doomed to stay.'

'It is already rather dull,' said Merry, sitting and swinging his legs as he sat on the brink of the wall. 'At least it is for hobbits, cooped up in a stone city, and troubled with wars, while their visitors talk and nod together about their strange journey, and tell no one else about it. I last saw you at the Hornburg, and then I thought you were going to Dunharrow,(17) but up you come on ships out of the South. How did you do it?'

'Yes, do tell us,' said Pippin. 'I tried Aragorn, but he was too full of troubles, and just smiled.'

'It would be a long story fully told,' said Legolas, 'and there are memories of that road that I do not wish to recall. Never again will I venture on the Paths of the Dead, not for any friendship; and but for my promise to Gimli I would vow never go into the White Mountains again.'

'Well, for my part,' said Gimli, '[wonder was stronger than fear >) the fear is past, and only wonder remains; yet it cannot be denied that it is a dreadful road.'(18)

'What are the Paths of the Dead?' said Pippin. 'I have never heard them named before.'

'It is a path through the Mountains,' began Gimli.

'Yes, I saw the door from a distance,' Merry broke in. 'It is up in Dunharrow, in the mountains behind Theoden's town and hall at Edoras. There is a long row of old stones leading across a high mountain field to a forbidding black mass, the Dwimorberg they call it, and there is a cave and a great opening at the foot of it, which nobody dares to enter. I think the Rohirrim believe that inside there dwell Dead Men, or their shadows, out of a past long before they came to that land.'

'So they told us,' said Legolas, 'and they forbade us to go in; but Aragorn could not be turned from it. He was in a grim mood. And that fair lady that lies now in the Houses below, Eowyn, wept at his going. Indeed at the last in the sight of all she set her arms about him imploring him not to take that road, and when he stood there unmoved, stern as stone, she humbled herself to kneel in the dust. It was a grievous sight.'

'But do not think that he was not moved,' said Gimli. 'Indeed, I think Aragorn himself was so deeply grieved that he went through all perils after like a man that can feel little more. He raised her up and kissed her hand, and then without a word we set out,(19) before the sun came over the black ridges of the mountain. I do not know how to put it into words, but even as we passed the last great standing stone a dread fell on me, of what I could not say, and my blood seemed running cold. 1 lifted my feet like lead across the threshold of that darkling door; and hardly had we passed within when a blindness of very night came upon us.

'Madness it would seem to try and take horses on such a road, but Aragorn said that we must attempt it, for every hour lost was perilous. We had to dismount and lead them, but I do not think they would have gone far, if it had not been for Legolas. He sang a song that went softly in the darkness, and though they sweated and trembled they did not refuse the road.

I am speaking of our horses that the Rohirrim gave us;(20) the horses of the Rangers, it seemed, were so faithful to them that nothing would stay them if their masters were beside them.

'We had brought a few torches, and Elladan [> Aragorn]

went ahead bearing one, and Elrohir [> Elladan] with another went at the rear. Bats flew over us, and [> We saw nothing, but]

if we halted there seemed an endless whisper of voices all about, that sometimes rose into words, though not of any tongue that I have ever heard. Nothing assailed us, and yet steadily fear grew on us, as we went on. Most of all because we knew, how I know not but we knew, that we could not turn back: that all the black road behind us was packed with things that followed us but could not be seen.

'So it went on for some hours, and then we came to a sight that I cannot forget. The road, for so it was: no mere cavern-track, had been wide, so far as we could judge, and though it was utterly dark the air was clean. But now we came suddenly into a great empty space through which the way ran on. The dread was so great on me that I could hardly walk. Away to the left something glittered in the gloom as Aragorn's torch went by. ...

It will be seen that when my father transformed this story told by Gimli of the Paths of the Dead and placed it much earlier in the book (while in 'The Last Debate' merely referring to it as having been told to Merry and Pippin by Legolas: 'Swiftly then he told of the haunted road under the mountains,' RK p. 150), he retained Gimli as the one through whose experience the passage of the tunnels is described.

Gimli described the mailclad skeleton clutching at the door in almost the same words as are found in 'The Passing of the Grey Company' (RK pp. 60 - 1), with the addition that on the helm and the hilts of the sword there were 'north-runes'. But Aragorn here named the dead warrior:

'"Here lies Baldor son of Brego," he said, "first heir of that Golden Hall to which he never returned. He should be lying now under the flowers of Evermind (21) in the Third Mound of the Mark; but now there are nine mounds and seven green with grass, and through all the long years he has lain here at the door he could not open. But whither that door led, and why he wished to pass, none now shall ever know."