The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien

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 wasa skyless world, in which his eye, through dim gulfs of shadowy air, saw only ever-mounting slopes, great walls of stone behind
great walls, and frowning precipices wreathed with mist. He sat for a moment half dreaming, listening to the noise of water,
the whisper of dark trees, the crack of stone, and the vast waiting silence that brooded behind all sound. He loved mountains,
or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the
insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.
    He was very tired, for though they had ridden slowly, they had ridden with very little rest. Hour after hour for nearly three
weary days he had jogged up and down, over passes, and through long dales, and across many streams. Sometimes where the way
was broader he had ridden at the king’s side, not noticing that many of the Riders smiled to see the two together: the hobbit
on his little shaggy grey pony, and the Lord of Rohan on his great white horse. Then he had talked to Théoden, telling him
about his home and the doings of the Shire-folk, or listening in turn to tales of the Mark and its mighty men of old. But
most of the time, especially on this last day, Merry had ridden by himself just behind the king, saying nothing, and trying
to understand the slow sonorous speech of Rohan that he heard the men behind him using. It was a language in which there seemed
to be many words that he knew, though spoken more richly and strongly than in the Shire, yet he could not piece the words
together. At times some Rider would lift up his clear voice in stirring song, and Merry felt his heart leap, though he did
not know what it was about.
    All the same he had been lonely, and never more so than now at the day’s end. He wondered where in all this strange world
Pippin had got to; and what would become of Aragorn and Legolas and Gimli. Then suddenly like a cold touch on his heart he
thought of Frodo and Sam. ‘I am forgetting them!’ he said to himself reproachfully. ‘And yet they aremore important than all the rest of us. And I came to help them; but now they must be hundreds of miles away, if they are
still alive.’ He shivered.
    ‘Harrowdale at last!’ said Éomer. ‘Our journey is almost at an end.’ They halted. The paths out of the narrow gorge fell steeply.
Only a glimpse, as through a tall window, could be seen of the great valley in the gloaming below. A single small light could
be seen twinkling by the river.
    ‘This journey is over, maybe,’ said Théoden, ‘but I have far yet to go. Two nights ago the moon was full, and in the morning
I shall ride to Edoras to the gathering of the Mark.’
    ‘But if you would take my counsel,’ said Éomer in a low voice, ‘you would then return hither, until the war is over,