return

1040 the return of the king
the ford and filing along the road towards the camp prepared
for them. Only the king and his guard were going up into the
Hold.
At last the king’s company came to a sharp brink, and the
climbing road passed into a cutting between walls of rock,
and so went up a short slope and out on to a wide upland.
The Firienfeld men called it, a green mountain-field of grass
and heath, high above the deep-delved courses of the Snowbourn,
laid upon the lap of the great mountains behind: the
Starkhorn southwards, and northwards the saw-toothed mass
of Írensaga, between which there faced the riders, the grim
black wall of the Dwimorberg, the Haunted Mountain rising
out of steep slopes of sombre pines. Dividing the upland into
two there marched a double line of unshaped standing stones
that dwindled into the dusk and vanished in the trees. Those
who dared to follow that road came soon to the black Dimholt
under Dwimorberg, and the menace of the pillar of stone,
and the yawning shadow of the forbidden door.
Such was the dark Dunharrow, the work of long-forgotten
men. Their name was lost and no song or legend remembered
it. For what purpose they had made this place, as a town or
secret temple or a tomb of kings, none in Rohan could say.
Here they laboured in the Dark Years, before ever a ship
came to the western shores, or Gondor of the Dúnedain was
built; and now they had vanished, and only the old Púkel-men
were left, still sitting at the turnings of the road.
Merry stared at the lines of marching stones: they were
worn and black; some were leaning, some were fallen, some
cracked or broken; they looked like rows of old and hungry
teeth. He wondered what they could be, and he hoped that
the king was not going to follow them into the darkness
beyond. Then he saw that there were clusters of tents and
booths on either side of the stony way; but these were not set
near the trees, and seemed rather to huddle away from them
towards the brink of the cliff. The greater number were on
the right, where the Firienfeld was wider; and on the left there
was a smaller camp, in the midst of which stood a tall pavilion.