towers

helm’s deep 689
and reared, eager to follow; but only a swift bird on the wing
could have overtaken him.
‘What does that mean?’ said one of the guard to Háma.
‘That Gandalf Greyhame has need of haste,’ answered
Háma. ‘Ever he goes and comes unlooked-for.’
‘Wormtongue, were he here, would not find it hard to
explain,’ said the other.
‘True enough,’ said Háma; ‘but for myself, I will wait until
I see Gandalf again.’
‘Maybe you will wait long,’ said the other.
The host turned away now from the road to the Fords of
Isen and bent their course southward. Night fell, and still
they rode on. The hills drew near, but the tall peaks of Thrihyrne
were already dim against the darkening sky. Still some
miles away, on the far side of the Westfold Vale, a great bay
in the mountains, lay a green coomb, out of which a gorge
opened in the hills. Men of that land called it Helm’s Deep,
after a hero of old wars who had made his refuge there. Ever
steeper and narrower it wound inward from the north under
the shadow of the Thrihyrne, till the crowhaunted cliffs rose
like mighty towers on either side, shutting out the light.
At Helm’s Gate, before the mouth of the Deep, there was
a heel of rock thrust outward by the northern cliff. There
upon its spur stood high walls of ancient stone, and within
them was a lofty tower. Men said that in the far-off days of
the glory of Gondor the sea-kings had built here this fastness
with the hands of giants. The Hornburg it was called, for a
trumpet sounded upon the tower echoed in the Deep behind,
as if armies long-forgotten were issuing to war from caves
beneath the hills. A wall, too, the men of old had made from
the Hornburg to the southern cliff, barring the entrance to
the gorge. Beneath it by a wide culvert the Deeping-stream
passed out. About the feet of the Hornrock it wound, and
flowed then in a gully through the midst of a wide green
gore, sloping gently down from Helm’s Gate to Helm’s Dike.