The Lord of the Rings: Four Roads Through the War of the Ring
The War of the Ring, from Gandalf's return to Bag End in April 3018 to the white ship at the Grey Havens in September 3021, followed on four roads at once: Frodo with the Ring, Gandalf, Aragorn and the line of Isildur, and the rest of the Fellowship. Open the River view to watch the threads part at Parth Galen and meet again on the Field of Cormallen. Dates follow the Shire Reckoning of the Third Age. Every Shire month has thirty days, so the three days our calendar lacks are placed on 28 February and 1 July and named in the text. Retold in original prose; nothing from the books is quoted. An example of plotting a braided novel: one chronology, several points of view.
Fire on the Hearth at Bag End
In the spring Gandalf came to Bag End after a long absence and asked Frodo for the ring that Bilbo had left him, and cast it into the fire. When Frodo drew it out with the tongs it was cool; and around it, outside and in, a band of flowing letters glowed faintly, in the speech of Mordor. Then the wizard told him the history of the thing, from its forging in the Second Age to the river where Gollum had found it, and what it would work upon any who kept it. Frodo begged him to take it. Gandalf would not so much as touch it, for he knew too well what it would make of him.
Prisoner of Orthanc
At Midsummer Radagast the Brown met Gandalf on the road with a message from Saruman, head of their order, bidding him come in haste to Isengard. Gandalf went, suspecting little; for Saruman had been first among the wizards for two thousand years. He found the white robe become a robe of many colours, and heard counsel of treason: that the Wise should make terms with the rising Power, or better, seize the Ring and rule in its place. Gandalf refused. They set him upon the pinnacle of Orthanc, alone in the wind, above a valley of smoke and pits where Saruman bred wolves and Orcs for war.
The Windlord at Midnight
Radagast, who knew nothing of the treason, had asked the beasts and birds to bring any news to Gandalf. So it was that Gwaihir the Windlord, swiftest of the Great Eagles, came to the tower-top in the dark before dawn, and found him there, and bore him away. That same day the Black Riders crossed the Fords of Isen, riding north. Gandalf had been two months on the pinnacle. The Nine had not been idle.
Shadowfax
Gwaihir set him down in Rohan. At Edoras he was not welcome, for Théoden the king was old before his time, and a counsellor named Wormtongue was ever at his ear. Théoden bade him take any horse he pleased and be gone before the morrow. Gandalf chose the best in all the Mark, a grey stallion of the Mearas that no man had ridden, and the king was wroth. Two days Gandalf followed the horse over the plains before it would suffer him to come near. Then it came to him of its own will, and he rode it with neither saddle nor bridle, and it bore him north faster than any rider had crossed that land. He named it Shadowfax.
Frodo Leaves Bag End
In that autumn Frodo sold Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses and gave out that he was going to live quietly in Buckland. That was a tale for the neighbours. Gandalf had not come back as he had promised, and on the night of the twenty-third, with Sam and Pippin, Frodo went out by the back door and took the paths across the fields, as a thief might. On the next day, where the road ran under the eaves of the Woody End, a horseman in black came down behind them and halted, and bent his hooded head this way and that, as one who sniffs for a scent. Frodo lay under the roots of a tree by the road, and a great desire came on him to slip the Ring upon his finger. He did not. The rider went on.
The Old Forest
At Crickhollow Frodo learned that his friends had long known his secret and would not be left behind; and so four hobbits, not three, went out at dawn through a gate in the High Hay into the Old Forest. The trees leaned close and every path bent toward the Withywindle, and there on the bank an old grey willow drew Merry and Pippin into its cracks and shut upon them. It was Tom Bombadil who came singing along the river and bade the tree let go. On the second evening in his house Frodo gave him the Ring, and he set it on his finger, and he did not vanish. He handed it back with a laugh, as a man returns a trinket of small account.
The Barrow-downs
Fog came down upon the downs, and they were parted, and Frodo woke in a stone chamber beneath a mound. His friends lay beside him clad in white, cold and still, with gold upon them and a naked sword across their necks; and round the corner of the chamber an arm came groping toward them on its fingers. He might have put on the Ring and gone out alone. Instead he hewed the arm with a short sword that lay by him, and remembered the rhyme that Tom had taught him, and called; and Tom came. From that hoard each hobbit took a dagger of Westernesse, made in Arnor long ago against the Witch-king of Angmar. None of them knew what one of those blades was yet to do.
The Prancing Pony
In the common-room at Bree Frodo called himself Mr Underhill and meant to be dull and unnoticed. But Pippin began to talk of Bilbo's party, and to stop his mouth Frodo got up on a table and sang a comic song about a cow and the Man in the Moon; and when he fell off the table, his hand was in his pocket, and he was gone. He came back into sight in a corner, red and shaking. Most of the room had seen nothing but a trick gone wrong. One man by the wall, weather-worn, in a dark green cloak and hood, had seen a good deal more, and asked for a quiet word with him.
Strider at Bree
The ranger in the corner was called Strider in Bree, and was not trusted there. In the hobbits' parlour he offered to guide them, and named his price: that they take him with them. Sam was against it. Then the innkeeper remembered a letter Gandalf had left for Frodo three months before, and had forgotten to send. In it Gandalf vouched for him and gave his true name: Aragorn son of Arathorn, Chieftain of the Dúnedain of the North, the last remnant of the kingdom of Arnor, and heir in right line of Isildur. He was eighty-seven years old and did not look it. When Sam still doubted, Aragorn laid his hand upon his sword and half drew it, and the blade was broken a foot below the hilt.
Lightning on Weathertop
Gandalf came to Bree on the last night of September and found the hobbits gone before him with a stranger. He rode after them, and on the old watch-hill of Weathertop he took his stand to wait; and on the night of the third of October the Nine came against him there. All that night they strove. Strider and the hobbits, far off in the fens, saw flashes leap into the sky above the hill and did not know their meaning. At sunrise Gandalf broke away northward, drawing some of the riders after him; and on a flat stone at the summit he left a mark for those who could read it: a rune, and three strokes.
The Blade on Weathertop
Under the hill they made their camp in a dell, and in the night five shapes came up out of the dark. Frodo's terror was greater than his will, and he slipped the Ring upon his finger; and at once the shadows were shadows no longer, but tall figures in grey, with pale merciless faces, and one crowned among them. He struck at that one's feet and cried out the name of Elbereth. A cold blade pierced his shoulder. When Strider leapt in with fire in either hand the riders drew back; and on the grass there remained only a knife, and its steel faded like smoke as the sun came up.
A Lay under Weathertop
While they waited in the dell beneath Weathertop, Aragorn chanted to the hobbits a part of the lay of Beren and Lúthien: how a mortal man loved an elf-maiden, and how she forsook her immortality to be with him. He told it as a tale of the elder days. He did not tell them that he was himself betrothed to one of that kindred. When the Nine came he drove them off with burning brands, and knelt over Frodo, and sang slow words above the wound, and bruised the leaves of athelas, the kingsfoil, which grows only where the Men of the West once dwelt or camped. It eased the cold. It could not draw the splinter.
The Ford of Bruinen
For fourteen days Frodo rode with a splinter of that blade working inward toward his heart, and the world went grey and thin about him. At the last the Elf-lord Glorfindel set him upon his own white horse and sent it running, and the Nine came out of the trees and the pass behind. The horse bore him over the Ford. On the far side he turned and bade the riders go back, and their chief laughed. Then the river rose with a roaring, and in the flood it seemed to Frodo that there rode white horsemen upon white horses with manes of foam; and they swept the Nine away. He fell, and knew no more.
The Council of Elrond
Elrond called a council, and to it came, each on his own errand and without any summons, Elves of Mirkwood and Rivendell, Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain, a man of Gondor named Boromir, a Ranger, a wizard, and two hobbits. Each errand, it turned out, was the same. They told the Ring's story from its forging to that morning, and debated all day whether to hide it with Bombadil, send it over the Sea, or wield it against its maker. At last they fell silent, and in the silence Frodo, to his own surprise, offered to carry it to the Fire himself.
The Nine Walkers
Nine were chosen to set against the Nine Riders: the Ring-bearer and Sam; Gandalf; Aragorn and Boromir for Men; Legolas for the Elves; Gimli son of Glóin for the Dwarves; and Merry and Pippin, against Elrond's doubt, because they would not be left behind. Bilbo gave Frodo his mithril shirt and his little sword Sting, and wished he could go himself. Elrond laid no oath upon them. They went out at dusk on a cold grey day, on foot, with Bill the pony from Bree to carry the baggage.
The Sword Reforged
Before the Company set out, the smiths of Rivendell forged anew the sword of Elendil, whose shard had cut the Ring from Sauron's hand three thousand years before. Aragorn named it Andúril, Flame of the West, and its blade shone red in the sun and cold in the moon. He had loved Arwen, daughter of Elrond, since his twentieth year. Elrond had given his consent on one condition only: she should wed no lesser man than the King of both Gondor and Arnor. Aragorn went out that night with the sword and without a kingdom.
The Doors of Durin
Caradhras had beaten them back with snow, and wolves had come upon them in the night. With no road left, they came at dusk to the western wall of Moria, where Gimli's people had once dwelt, and found there a door that could not be seen until the moon shone upon it. The riddle written above it baffled Gandalf a long while. The answer was simple. As the doors swung open a thing in the dark lake behind them seized Frodo by the ankle with a long arm, and the others had barely hewn him free when the doors crashed shut behind them. Sam had had to let Bill go. There was no way now but through.
The Chamber of Mazarbul
On their first night in Moria Pippin dropped a stone into a well out of curiosity, and far below something began to tap. On the third day they found Balin's tomb, and beside it a hacked and burned book, the last record of his colony. Gimli cast his hood over his face. The final pages spoke of the gate taken, and of drums below, and broke off. While Gandalf read, the drums began. The Company fought at the door of the chamber against Orcs and a cave-troll, and an orc-chieftain drove a spear against Frodo's breast, and the mithril turned the point. Then they ran.
The Bridge of Khazad-dûm
From the east hall of Moria the Company fled toward the Gates, and upon the narrow bridge over the abyss Gandalf turned. That which came behind was a thing of shadow and flame out of the elder days, a Balrog of Morgoth, whom the Dwarves had named Durin's Bane when it awoke beneath the mountain a thousand years before. Gandalf forbade it the way. It came on. He smote the bridge with his staff, and the bridge broke beneath it, and it fell; but as it fell its whip curled about his knees and dragged him to the brink. He clutched at the stone, and slid, and was gone into the dark.
Lothlórien
Grieving, they came beneath the golden trees of Lórien, whose leaves do not fall until the spring. The Elves would have led Gimli blindfold, since no Dwarf had passed that way in living memory, and he refused; so Aragorn had them all go blindfold, Legolas too, and Legolas was offended. At Caras Galadhon Galadriel looked long at each of them in silence, and each felt he was offered a secret choice between his quest and his heart's desire. Boromir spoke of it afterward, uneasily. Gimli, who had heard dark things of her all his life, went from her presence in love.
The Battle of the Peak
Long he fell, and they struck deep water together, and fought beneath the roots of the mountain where no light had ever come. Then the Balrog fled up the Endless Stair, which climbs unbroken from the lowest delving to the peak of Zirakzigil, and Gandalf followed it, eight days climbing and striving in the dark. On the summit they fought in sun and snow, and those who dwelt far below saw lightning upon the mountain and heard thunder. The Balrog was cast down, and it broke the mountainside in its ruin. Then darkness took Gandalf, and he died, and his body lay upon the peak.
The Mirror of Galadriel
At evening the Lady led Frodo and Sam down into a green hollow where a silver basin stood on a pedestal, and filled it from a stream, and bade them look. Sam saw the Shire, and its trees felled, and a chimney of red brick where the old mill had stood. Frodo saw a ship upon grey water, and a burning city, and last of all an Eye, rimmed with fire, that searched. Then he offered her the Ring, freely. For a moment a light went up about her and she was more than any queen of the old songs, and the hobbits were afraid. Then she was a slender woman in white again. She had chosen, she said, to pass over the Sea and fade from Middle-earth rather than rule it.
Sent Back
He had been returned to the world with nothing, and with a term set upon him: to remain until his work was finished. Many days he lay upon the peak while the stars wheeled over him, and the whole murmur of the earth came up to him there. Gwaihir found him again and bore him to Lothlórien, a day after the Company had gone down the river. There he was healed and clothed. The grey robe was gone. He came out of Lórien in white. The same night Frodo looked into the Mirror of Galadriel.
The Gifts of the Lady
At parting Galadriel gave each of them a gift. To Aragorn a sheath for Andúril and a green stone that was his by prophecy. To Sam a little box of earth from her orchard. To Frodo a phial holding the light of Eärendil's star, caught in the water of her fountain. Gimli asked for nothing, and being pressed, asked for a single strand of her hair. She gave him three. No Elf in that land would have believed it. They pushed off in three grey boats down the Silverlode, and Gimli wept, and was not ashamed.
The Seat of Seeing on Amon Hen
Frodo asked for an hour alone to choose the road, and Boromir followed him into the woods of Amon Hen, and spoke fair, and then foul, and at last laid hands on him. Frodo put on the Ring and fled up the hill, and came blindly to the ancient seat at its summit, and sat. From there, unseen, he beheld all the lands at war: smoke over Rohan, ships upon the southern waters, and at the last the Dark Tower, and a will within it that turned toward him like a searching finger. A voice in his mind that was not his own bade him cast off the Ring. He obeyed it, and in that breath of freedom he chose to go on alone.
The Death of Boromir
Boromir had come after Frodo in the woods, and had come to his senses too late, and was ashamed. When the Orcs of Isengard and Mordor came over the hill he was the only one near Merry and Pippin, and he fought for them. He blew the great horn of Gondor, and far to the south in Minas Tirith his father and his brother heard it, and did not know what it meant. The hobbits were carried off alive. The Orcs had orders to take the halflings unharmed, and to bring them to Isengard.
The Choice at Parth Galen
Aragorn found Boromir beneath a tree, with many arrows in him and Orcs slain in heaps about him, and the hobbits he had fought for gone. Boromir confessed that he had tried to take the Ring from Frodo. Aragorn gave him what comfort he could, and held him while he died. They laid him in a grey boat with his cloven horn and his broken sword, and gave him to the Great River. Then Aragorn chose. He would not follow the Ring-bearer into the East. He would go after the two captives on foot, with Legolas and Gimli, into the wilds of Rohan.
Treebeard
Carried across Rohan like sacks, Merry and Pippin escaped in the confusion when the Riders fell upon the Orcs at the forest's edge, and crept into Fangorn. There, upon a sunlit shelf of rock, a voice like a deep woodwind spoke to them, and they found themselves looking up at an Ent fourteen feet high, with deep brown eyes and a beard like moss. Treebeard had been old when the Elves were young, and he was not to be hurried. He took them to his house, and gave them a draught that would one day make them the tallest hobbits in the history of the Shire, and listened to their news for a very long time. Shire Reckoning: 29 February, a day our calendar lacks.
The Taming of Sméagol
Three days Frodo and Sam were lost among the cliffs of the Emyn Muil, and on the third night the creature that had followed them since Moria came down the rock face head first, like a spider, and Sam caught him. Sam would have tied him and left him. Frodo remembered that Gandalf had once pitied this wretch, and would not. Instead he made Gollum swear, by the very thing he craved, to serve its master. Gollum swore, grovelling, and for a while he kept his word. The Elvish rope that bound his ankle burned him like fire, though it was soft to a hobbit's hand. Shire Reckoning: 29 February, a day our calendar lacks.
The Riders of Rohan
The three hunters ran after the Orcs for four days, forty-five leagues over the grass, and seldom rested. On the fourth morning a company of horsemen swept round them in a ring with spears levelled: Éomer, Third Marshal of the Mark, who had destroyed the Orc-band at the forest's edge and burned the dead. He had seen no hobbits. Aragorn cast back his cloak and drew Andúril, and named himself Isildur's heir. Éomer, against the law of his king, lent them horses, Hasufel and Arod, and Aragorn promised to bring them back to Edoras. He kept the promise. Shire Reckoning: 30 February, a day our calendar lacks.
The White Rider
In the eaves of Fangorn the three hunters, seeking the lost hobbits, came upon an old man in rags and a wide-brimmed hat. Gimli took him for Saruman and Legolas bent his bow; but the rags fell away, and he stood in white, and their weapons were as nothing in their hands. Aragorn knew him first. He told them that Merry and Pippin were safe with the Ents, and that the Ents were waking. Then he whistled, and Shadowfax came out of the plain. Gandalf seemed to have half forgotten his own old name; he tried it over, as a man tries on a coat he has not worn for years.
The Dead Marshes
At dawn Gollum led them into the fens by paths that none but he could find. Long ago a great battle had been fought here before the Black Gate, and the marsh had crept over the graves. In the pools, beneath the dark water, the hobbits saw faces: Elves and Men and Orcs, fair and foul, all dead, with pale lights burning above them like tapers. Frodo went toward the lights as one in a dream, and Gollum hissed at him to follow them not. Once a winged shadow passed over the sky, and Gollum lay flat in the mud and shook. They lived on the waybread of the Elves. He would not touch it.
The Healing of Théoden
At Meduseld the doorwardens made them leave their weapons at the door, and Gandalf kept his staff, as an old man's prop. Théoden sat bent and dim upon his throne, and Wormtongue at his feet spoke poison in his ear. Gandalf raised the staff, and there was thunder, and a darkness in the hall, and then light. He led the king out onto the high porch into the open air, and Théoden straightened his back, and asked for his sword. Wormtongue was given his choice, to ride to war or to depart, and he departed, to his true master. That day Théoden rode west toward the Fords of Isen at the head of his own men.
The Last March of the Ents
The Entmoot lasted three days, which the Ents thought hasty. On the third afternoon they ended it with a great shout, and marched on Isengard by night with the two hobbits riding on Treebeard's shoulders; and behind them came a dark wood that walked, and turned aside in the night toward Helm's Deep. Ents are stronger than trolls, and they tore the stone of Isengard apart with their hands. On the morrow they dammed the Isen and turned it into Saruman's pits, and the fires went out in steam. Saruman shut himself in Orthanc, whose rock even the Ents could not break.
Helm's Deep
All night the host of Isengard assailed the Hornburg under driving rain, and came again and again with ladders, and at last with a fire of Saruman's devising that blew a breach in the Deeping Wall. Aragorn and Éomer held the gate. Legolas and Gimli kept count of the foes they slew, as a game, and at the end Gimli won by one, forty-two to forty-one. At dawn Théoden rode forth with Aragorn at his side, and the enemy broke and fled toward a wood that had not been there the day before. Upon the hills a white rider appeared with the men of Erkenbrand. The trees were Huorns, and the Orcs who went in among them did not come out.
The Voice of Saruman
At the ruin of Isengard Saruman came out upon the balcony of Orthanc and spoke, and his voice was a spell that made all who heard it long to agree with him. The Riders wavered. Gandalf laughed, and offered him freedom if he would yield his key and his staff. Saruman would not; and Gandalf called him back, and spoke a word, and his staff split asunder in his hand. From a window above, Wormtongue hurled down a ball of black crystal at them, and it missed. Pippin could not put it from his mind, and in the night he stole it from beneath the sleeping wizard's hand and gazed into it, and the Eye gazed back. Before dawn Gandalf took him up on Shadowfax and rode for Minas Tirith.
The Stone of Orthanc
Out of the night thirty Rangers of the North rode up, and with them the sons of Elrond; and Halbarad bore a tall staff wrapped in black cloth, a gift from Arwen. Elrond's message was short: time had run out, and there was a road beneath the mountains that no living man had taken. At the Hornburg Aragorn took up the palantír of Orthanc, which was his by right as Isildur's heir, and looked into it, and wrestled with Sauron himself for the mastery of the Stone, and won. He showed the Enemy the sword that had been broken; and he saw in turn a fleet coming up from the south that would take Minas Tirith unless it was stayed.
The Window on the West
Men in green and brown took them in Ithilien, and their captain was Faramir, brother of Boromir. He had seen his brother's body pass him on the river in a grey boat, and he guessed much. That night, behind a curtain of falling water that the sunset turned to gold and ruby, he learned the rest, because Sam said too much. Earlier Faramir had declared that he would leave such a thing lying where it fell, were it ever at his feet. Now he knew what it was and where it lay, and he held to his word. He set them free, and warned them against the pass by which Gollum meant to lead them.
The Paths of the Dead
At daybreak the Grey Company rode into the Dark Door beneath the Dwimorberg, and the horses would not go until Legolas sang to them. There dwelt the Oathbreakers, men of the mountains who had sworn to Isildur to fight against Sauron and had failed him, and could not rest until their oath was kept. Gimli walked in the dark with the dead whispering behind him, and afterward remembered little of that road. At midnight they came out at the Stone of Erech in the valley beyond. Aragorn summoned the dead by Isildur's right, and a horn answered from the hill, and a grey host came up out of the ground.
Pippin in Minas Tirith
Gandalf brought Pippin before Denethor, Steward of Gondor, who questioned him closely about the death of his son. Stung by the old man's scorn, Pippin drew his little sword and offered his service in payment of Boromir's debt, and Denethor accepted it. So Pippin became a Guard of the Citadel, in black and silver, the only one of his size. The Steward's face was grey and his mind was darkened by something he would not name. He kept a palantír of his own, and had been looking into it for years.
The Cross-roads
No dawn came that day. Under a brown gloom they came to the old meeting of the roads, where the stone image of a king sat in state. Orcs had struck off its head and set a rough stone in its place, daubed with a leering face. But the true head lay by the wayside, and a trailing plant had crowned it with small flowers, white and gold, and the last of the sun broke under the cloud and lit them. That evening, from the side of the Morgul Vale, Frodo watched the gates of the dead city open and its host march out to war, and its lord before them upon a black horse. The lord halted, and turned his hooded head. Then he rode on.
Shelob's Lair
Gollum led them up the endless stairs and into a tunnel that stank, where the darkness was a thing that could be touched. There dwelt Shelob, who was in that place before Sauron came, a spider-shape of hunger. Frodo raised the phial of Galadriel and it blazed like a star, and the many eyes drew back; and with Sting he cut the webs that barred the way out. But beyond the pass she came on him by another road, and stung him, and he fell. Sam fought her alone and wounded her so that she fled. Believing his master dead, Sam took the Ring and went on, for someone must. Then he heard Orcs bear Frodo away, and learned from their talk that he lived.
Pelargir
Four days the Dead rode south at Aragorn's back, and terror went before them, and the men of the coastlands fled. At Pelargir upon the Anduin lay the fleet of the Corsairs of Umbar, fifty great ships and smaller craft beyond count, laden and ready to sail against Gondor. The shadow host swept over the decks, and the crews leapt into the river. Aragorn declared the oath fulfilled, and the Dead were gone like mist. He took the ships and manned them with the men of southern Gondor, and turned them north up the river.
The Tower of Cirith Ungol
For a day Sam was the Ring-bearer. It offered him visions of himself as a mighty gardener of all the world, and he put them away, having no wish for more land than he could dig himself. In the tower the Orcs had quarrelled over Frodo's mithril coat, and fought, and few were left alive. Sam climbed the stair, and in the dark at the top he sang a song of his own making, and a faint voice answered. He found Frodo stripped and beaten, and gave him back the Ring. For a moment Frodo called him a thief. Then he wept.
Before the Gate of Minas Tirith
In the last hours of the night the Gate of Minas Tirith was broken by ram and by sorcery, and the Lord of the Nazgûl rode in beneath the arch. Alone in the gateway, upon Shadowfax, sat Gandalf. The Black Captain cast back his hood; there was a crown, and beneath it nothing to be seen. Neither gave way. Then in some courtyard of the City a cock crowed, and far away in the north great horns were blowing. Rohan had come. The Witch-king turned to meet it. Pippin came running to beg Gandalf's help, and he left the Gate for the Silent Street, where Denethor had built a pyre for himself and his living son. Faramir was saved. Denethor burned.
Dernhelm and the Witch-king
Merry had ridden to war in secret, behind a young rider called Dernhelm who spoke little. On the Pelennor the Lord of the Nazgûl came down upon a winged beast on Théoden, and the king's horse fell and crushed him. Dernhelm stood between the beast and the fallen king, and slew the beast, and cast off the helm. It was Éowyn, the king's niece. It had been foretold that no man would slay the Witch-king. Merry, unregarded, crept behind and drove his dagger from the Barrow-downs into the back of its knee, and the spell that knit its sinews was broken, and Éowyn struck between crown and mantle. The blade, which had waited more than a thousand years for that stroke, writhed and burned away like smoke.
The Black Ships
In the worst hour of the battle upon the Pelennor, black-sailed ships came up the river to the Harlond, and the defenders cried out in despair, for these were the Corsairs. Then upon the foremost ship a banner broke out, a White Tree and seven stars and a high crown, wrought by Arwen's hands, and the morning caught it. Aragorn came ashore with Andúril drawn and met Éomer in the midst of the field. That night he would not enter the City as a king. He went in hooded, as a captain of the Dúnedain, to the Houses of Healing, and called Faramir and Éowyn and Merry back out of the dark with a handful of kingsfoil.
The Black Gate
The host that marched to the Black Gate was a feint that could not be won, made to draw the Eye away from the mountain on the hope that two hobbits yet lived somewhere in Mordor. On the way Aragorn sent home those who could not bear the dread of that land, and did not shame them. The Messenger of Sauron came forth under a flag of truce and showed them Frodo's mithril coat and Sam's sword, and set terms. Gandalf refused them and took the tokens from his hands. Then the Gate opened and the hosts of Mordor poured out and ringed them about upon two hills of slag. Pippin, in the front rank, slew a troll and was buried beneath it.
Mount Doom
Across the plain of Gorgoroth they had cast away all they did not need, even their arms, and at the last Frodo could not stand, and Sam carried him up the side of the mountain on his back. At the door of the fire, the Sammath Naur, Frodo stood up straight at the brink; and there, at the end of all his road, he claimed the Ring for himself and put it on. Gollum, who had followed, fought the unseen hobbit and bit off his finger, Ring and all, and danced upon the edge, and fell. The mountain roared. Far away the Dark Tower crumbled, and a great shape of darkness rose above it, reaching out, and a wind took it and it was gone.
Eagles over Orodruin
When the Dark Tower fell and the Host of the West stood astonished upon the slag-hills, Gandalf called to Gwaihir, and the Eagle bore him south toward the burning mountain. The fire was running down its sides and there was little time. Upon a small hill of ash amid a sea of flame they found two hobbits lying together, their hands clasped, done with the world. Gwaihir and his brother Landroval lifted them up. Neither of them woke for many days.
The Field of Cormallen
They woke in Ithilien among the scent of flowers, clad in clean linen, and Gandalf was at their bedside, laughing. On the field of Cormallen the whole Host of the West rose to greet them, and the King himself bent the knee before them, and led them to his own throne, and set them upon it. A minstrel of Gondor stood and sang of Nine-fingered Frodo and the Ring. Sam had wondered aloud once, on the stairs of Cirith Ungol, whether anyone would ever put the two of them into a tale. He wept for joy, and the whole host laughed and wept with him.
The Crowning of Elessar
Before the Gate of Minas Tirith Faramir, Steward of Gondor, surrendered his white rod of office, and Aragorn gave it back to him. The ancient crown was brought forth in a black casket. Aragorn did not set it upon his own head. He asked that the Ring-bearer bear it to him and that Gandalf crown him, for the victory was theirs. So Aragorn son of Arathorn, in his eighty-ninth year, became King Elessar, the Elfstone, and ruled over Gondor and Arnor both. On that same day, far in the north, Elrond and Arwen set out from Rivendell.
The Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen
Upon the slopes of Mindolluin, above the City, Aragorn found a sapling of the White Tree growing at the edge of the snow, of the line that ran back through Númenor to the eldest of trees. He planted it in the Court of the Fountain, where the dead tree had stood. On the first day of Lithe Elrond's company came to the City, and on Midyear's Day Arwen Undómiel was wedded to the King. Elrond's condition had been met. His daughter had chosen a mortal life, and he knew the cost of it, and would bear it when he sailed. Shire Reckoning: Midyear's Day, which falls between June and July.
The Old Wound
Riding home, the company came to the Ford of Bruinen on the anniversary of the night on Weathertop, and Frodo halted his pony and would not go on. His shoulder ached, and he said that the dark was upon him again. Gandalf told him plainly that not every hurt could be mended. A year later on the same day it came back, and in March on the day of Shelob, and again the year after. Frodo marked the dates, and hid the sickness from the Shire as best he could.
Gandalf Turns Aside
Beyond Bree, where the road to the Barrow-downs turned away, Gandalf told the hobbits he would come no further. He had business with Tom Bombadil that had waited too long. He had no fear for them now. They had gone through fire, and he had seen what they had become; the trouble in the Shire, whatever it proved to be, was for its own people to mend. The four rode on to the Brandywine Bridge in the dark and found it barred with a spiked gate.
The Battle of Bywater
The four came home to find the Shire fenced and ruled by ruffians, the old trees cut down, and hobbits shut up in the Lockholes for grumbling. Merry blew the horn of the Mark that Éowyn had given him, and all over Bywater lights sprang up and hobbits came out of their doors with axes and hammers. Pippin rode through the night to Tuckborough and brought the Tooks down. The ruffians were trapped in a lane between farm carts and cut down, and nineteen hobbits died. It was the only battle fought in the Shire since the Battle of Greenfields in the year 1147 of the Shire Reckoning.
Saruman at Bag End
After the fighting at Bywater Frodo climbed the Hill to his own door, and found his garden cut down and a lean old man in the yard: Sharkey, the ruffians called him, and he was Saruman. He had come to spoil the Shire out of spite, and he had done it thoroughly. Frodo had drawn no sword that day, and he would not let the hobbits slay him now. Saruman stabbed at him, and the knife turned on the hidden mail and snapped, and still Frodo let him go. At the gate Wormtongue, mocked once too often, cut his master's throat, and was shot down. A grey mist rose from the body and looked to the West, and a cold wind blew it into nothing.
The Grey Havens
Two years after, Frodo gave Sam the red book in which Bilbo and he had written the whole story, and asked him to ride with him a little way. In the Woody End they met the Elves going west, and with them Bilbo, very old and sleepy, and Elrond and Galadriel. Then Sam understood. At the Havens Gandalf waited by a white ship. Merry and Pippin came riding hard to say farewell. Frodo kissed his friends and went aboard, and the ship went out into the West. Sam stood on the quay until night fell, and then rode home, and his wife set their daughter Elanor on his lap. She had been born on the twenty-fifth of March, the day the Ring was unmade.