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the muster of rohan 1039
frowning wall, a last outlier of the great roots of the Starkhorn,
cloven by the river in ages past.
On all the level spaces there was great concourse of men.
Some thronged to the roadside, hailing the king and the riders
from the West with glad cries; but stretching away into the
distance behind there were ordered rows of tents and booths,
and lines of picketed horses, and great store of arms, and
piled spears bristling like thickets of new-planted trees. Now
all the great assembly was falling into shadow, and yet, though
the night-chill blew cold from the heights, no lanterns glowed,
no fires were lit. Watchmen heavily cloaked paced to and fro.
Merry wondered how many Riders there were. He could
not guess their number in the gathering gloom, but it looked
to him like a great army, many thousands strong. While he
was peering from side to side the king’s party came up under
the looming cliff on the eastern side of the valley; and there
suddenly the path began to climb, and Merry looked up in
amazement. He was on a road the like of which he had never
seen before, a great work of men’s hands in years beyond the
reach of song. Upwards it wound, coiling like a snake, boring
its way across the sheer slope of rock. Steep as a stair, it
looped backwards and forwards as it climbed. Up it horses
could walk, and wains could be slowly hauled; but no enemy
could come that way, except out of the air, if it was defended
from above. At each turn of the road there were great standing
stones that had been carved in the likeness of men, huge
and clumsy-limbed, squatting cross-legged with their stumpy
arms folded on fat bellies. Some in the wearing of the years
had lost all features save the dark holes of their eyes that still
stared sadly at the passers-by. The Riders hardly glanced at
them. The Púkel-men they called them, and heeded them
little: no power or terror was left in them; but Merry gazed
at them with wonder and a feeling almost of pity, as they
loomed up mournfully in the dusk.
After a while he looked back and found that he had already
climbed some hundreds of feet above the valley, but still far
below he could dimly see a winding line of Riders crossing