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Chapter 3
THE MUSTER OF ROHAN
Now all roads were running together to the East to meet the
coming of war and the onset of the Shadow. And even as
Pippin stood at the Great Gate of the City and saw the Prince
of Dol Amroth ride in with his banners, the King of Rohan
came down out of the hills.
Day was waning. In the last rays of the sun the Riders cast
long pointed shadows that went on before them. Darkness
had already crept beneath the murmuring fir-woods that
clothed the steep mountain-sides. The king rode now slowly
at the end of the day. Presently the path turned round a
huge bare shoulder of rock and plunged into the gloom of
soft-sighing trees. Down, down they went in a long winding
file. When at last they came to the bottom of the gorge they
found that evening had fallen in the deep places. The sun
was gone. Twilight lay upon the waterfalls.
All day far below them a leaping stream had run down
from the high pass behind, cleaving its narrow way between
pine-clad walls; and now through a stony gate it flowed out
and passed into a wider vale. The Riders followed it, and
suddenly Harrowdale lay before them, loud with the noise of
waters in the evening. There the white Snowbourn, joined
by the lesser stream, went rushing, fuming on the stones,
down to Edoras and the green hills and the plains. Away to
the right at the head of the great dale the mighty Starkhorn
loomed up above its vast buttresses swathed in cloud; but its
jagged peak, clothed in everlasting snow, gleamed far above
the world, blue-shadowed upon the East, red-stained by the
sunset in the West.
Merry looked out in wonder upon this strange country, of
which he had heard many tales upon their long road. It was