The Two Towers Read Free Page B

there. They had been
     hewn with many cruel strokes, and two had been beheaded. The ground was wet with their dark blood.
    ‘Here is another riddle!’ said Gimli. ‘But it needs the light of day, and for that we cannot wait.’
    ‘Yet however you read it, it seems not unhopeful,’ said Legolas. ‘Enemies of the Orcs are likely to be our friends. Do any
     folk dwell in these hills?’
    ‘No,’ said Aragorn. ‘The Rohirrim seldom come here, and it is far from Minas Tirith. It might be that some company of Men
     were hunting here for reasons that we do not know. Yet I think not.’
    ‘What do you think?’ said Gimli.
    ‘I think that the enemy brought his own enemy with him,’ answered Aragorn. ‘These are Northern Orcs from far away. Among the
     slain are none of the great Orcs with the strange badges. There was a quarrel, I guess: it is no uncommon thing with these
     foul folk. Maybe there was some dispute about the road.’
    ‘Or about the captives,’ said Gimli. ‘Let us hope that they, too, did not meet their end here.’
    Aragorn searched the ground in a wide circle, but no other traces of the fight could be found. They went on. Already the eastward
     sky was turning pale; the stars were fading, and a grey light was slowly growing. A little further north they came to a fold in which a tiny stream, falling and winding, had cut a stony path down into the valley. In it some bushes grew,
     and there were patches of grass upon its sides.
    ‘At last!’ said Aragorn. ‘Here are the tracks that we seek! Up this water-channel: this is the way that the Orcs went after
     their debate.’
    Swiftly now the pursuers turned and followed the new path. As if fresh from a night’s rest they sprang from stone to stone.
     At last they reached the crest of the grey hill, and a sudden breeze blew in their hair and stirred their cloaks: the chill
     wind of dawn.
    Turning back they saw across the River the far hills kindled. Day leaped into the sky. The red rim of the sun rose over the
     shoulders of the dark land. Before them in the West the world lay still, formless and grey; but even as they looked, the shadows
     of night melted, the colours of the waking earth returned: green flowed over the wide meads of Rohan; the white mists shimmered
     in the water-vales; and far off to the left, thirty leagues or more, blue and purple stood the White Mountains, rising into
     peaks of jet, tipped with glimmering snows, flushed with the rose of morning.
    ‘Gondor! Gondor!’ cried Aragorn. ‘Would that I looked on you again in happier hour! Not yet does my road lie southward to
     your bright streams.
    Gondor! Gondor, between the Mountains and the Sea!
    West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree
    Fell like bright rain in gardens of the Kings of old.
    O proud walls! White towers! O wingéd crown and throne of gold!
    O Gondor, Gondor! Shall Men behold the Silver Tree
    Or West Wind blow again between the Mountains and the Sea?
    Now let us go!’ he said, drawing his eyes away from the South, and looking out west and north to the way that he must tread.
    The ridge upon which the companions stood went down steeply before their feet. Below it twenty fathoms or more, there was
     a wide and rugged shelf which ended suddenly in the brink of a sheer cliff: the East Wall of Rohan. So ended the Emyn Muil,
     and the green plains of the Rohirrim stretched away before them to the edge of sight.
    ‘Look!’ cried Legolas, pointing up into the pale sky above them. ‘There is the eagle again! He is very high. He seems to be
     flying now away, from this land back to the North. He is going with great speed. Look!’
    ‘No, not even my eyes can see him, my good Legolas,’ said Aragorn. ‘He must be far aloft indeed. I wonder what is his errand,
     if he is the same bird that I have seen before. But look! I can see something nearer at hand and more urgent; there is something
     moving over the plain!’
    ‘Many things,’ said Legolas. ‘It is