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Chapter 5
THE RIDE OF THE ROHIRRIM
It was dark and Merry could see nothing as he lay on the
ground rolled in a blanket; yet though the night was airless
and windless, all about him hidden trees were sighing softly.
He lifted his head. Then he heard it again: a sound like faint
drums in the wooded hills and mountain-steps. The throb
would cease suddenly and then be taken up again at some
other point, now nearer, now further off. He wondered if the
watchmen had heard it.
He could not see them, but he knew that all round him
were the companies of the Rohirrim. He could smell the
horses in the dark, and could hear their shiftings and their
soft stamping on the needle-covered ground. The host was
bivouacked in the pine-woods that clustered about Eilenach
Beacon, a tall hill standing up from the long ridges of the
Drúadan Forest that lay beside the great road in East Anórien.
Tired as he was Merry could not sleep. He had ridden now
for four days on end, and the ever-deepening gloom had
slowly weighed down his heart. He began to wonder why he
had been so eager to come, when he had been given every
excuse, even his lord’s command, to stay behind. He wondered,
too, if the old King knew that he had been disobeyed
and was angry. Perhaps not. There seemed to be some understanding
between Dernhelm and Elfhelm, the Marshal who
commanded the éored in which they were riding. He and all
his men ignored Merry and pretended not to hear if he spoke.
He might have been just another bag that Dernhelm was
carrying. Dernhelm was no comfort: he never spoke to anyone.
Merry felt small, unwanted, and lonely. Now the time
was anxious, and the host was in peril. They were less than
a day’s ride from the out-walls of Minas Tirith that encircled