towers

helm’s deep 699
‘Ai-oi!’ he shouted. ‘The Orcs are behind the wall. Ai-oi!
Come, Legolas! There are enough for us both. Khazâd aimênu!’
Gamling the Old looked down from the Hornburg, hearing
the great voice of the dwarf above all the tumult. ‘The Orcs
are in the Deep!’ he cried. ‘Helm! Helm! Forth Helmingas!’
he shouted as he leaped down the stair from the Rock with
many men of Westfold at his back.
Their onset was fierce and sudden, and the Orcs gave way
before them. Ere long they were hemmed in in the narrows
of the gorge, and all were slain or driven shrieking into the
chasm of the Deep to fall before the guardians of the hidden
caves.
‘Twenty-one!’ cried Gimli. He hewed a two-handed stroke
and laid the last Orc before his feet. ‘Now my count passes
Master Legolas again.’
‘We must stop this rat-hole,’ said Gamling. ‘Dwarves are
said to be cunning folk with stone. Lend us your aid, master!’
‘We do not shape stone with battle-axes, nor with our
finger-nails,’ said Gimli. ‘But I will help as I may.’
They gathered such small boulders and broken stones as
they could find to hand, and under Gimli’s direction the
Westfold-men blocked up the inner end of the culvert, until
only a narrow outlet remained. Then the Deeping-stream,
swollen by the rain, churned and fretted in its choked path,
and spread slowly in cold pools from cliff to cliff.
‘It will be drier above,’ said Gimli. ‘Come, Gamling, let us
see how things go on the wall!’
He climbed up and found Legolas beside Aragorn and
Éomer. The elf was whetting his long knife. There was for a
while a lull in the assault, since the attempt to break in through
the culvert had been foiled.
‘Twenty-one!’ said Gimli.
‘Good!’ said Legolas. ‘But my count is now two dozen. It
has been knife-work up here.’
* * *