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the black gate opens 1159
and the Nazgûl were abroad. Yet the air of the valley was
heavy with fear and enmity. Then they broke the evil bridge
and set red flames in the noisome fields and departed.
The day after, being the third day since they set out from
Minas Tirith, the army began its northward march along
the road. It was some hundred miles by that way from the
Cross-roads to the Morannon, and what might befall them
before they came so far none knew. They went openly but
heedfully, with mounted scouts before them on the road, and
others on foot upon either side, especially on the eastward
flank; for there lay dark thickets, and a tumbled land of rocky
ghylls and crags, behind which the long grim slopes of the
Ephel Dúath clambered up. The weather of the world remained
fair, and the wind held in the west, but nothing could
waft away the glooms and the sad mists that clung about
the Mountains of Shadow; and behind them at whiles great
smokes would arise and hover in the upper winds.
Ever and anon Gandalf let blow the trumpets, and the
heralds would cry: ‘The Lords of Gondor are come! Let all
leave this land or yield them up!’ But Imrahil said: ‘Say not
The Lords of Gondor. Say The King Elessar. For that is true,
even though he has not yet sat upon the throne; and it will
give the Enemy more thought, if the heralds use that name.’
And thereafter thrice a day the heralds proclaimed the coming
of the King Elessar. But none answered the challenge.
Nonetheless, though they marched in seeming peace, the
hearts of all the army, from the highest to the lowest, were
downcast, and with every mile that they went north foreboding
of evil grew heavier on them. It was near the end of
the second day of their march from the Cross-roads that they
first met any offer of battle. For a strong force of Orcs and
Easterlings attempted to take their leading companies in an
ambush; and that was in the very place where Faramir had
waylaid the men of Harad, and the road went in a deep
cutting through an out-thrust of the eastward hills. But
the Captains of the West were well warned by their scouts,