"J.R.R. Tolkien - 2 - The two towers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolkien J.R.R)

be that some company of Men were hunting here for reasons that we do not know. Yet I think not.'
'What do you think?' said Gimli.
'I think that the enemy brought his own enemy with him,' answered Aragorn. 'These are
Northern Orcs from far away. Among the slain are none of the great Orcs with the strange badges.
There was a quarrel, I guess: it is no uncommon thing with these foul folk. Maybe there was some
dispute about the road.'
'Or about the captives,' said Gimli. 'Let us hope that they, too, did not meet their end
here.'
Aragorn searched the ground in a wide circle, but no other traces of the fight could be
found. They went on. Already the eastward sky was turning pale; the stars were fading, and a grey
light was slowly growing. A little further north they came to a fold in which a tiny stream,
falling and winding, had cut a stony path down into the valley. In it some bushes grew, and there
were patches of grass upon its sides.
'At last!' said Aragorn. 'Here are the tracks that we seek! Up this water-channel: this is
the way that the Orcs went after their debate.'
Swiftly now the pursuers turned and followed the new path. As if fresh from a night's rest
they sprang from stone to stone. At last they reached the crest of the grey hill, and a sudden
breeze blew in their hair and stirred their cloaks: the chill wind of dawn.
Turning back they saw across the River the far hills kindled. Day leaped into the sky. The
red rim of the sun rose over the shoulders of the dark land. Before them in the West the world lay
still, formless and grey; but even as they looked, the shadows of night melted, the colours of the
waking earth returned: green flowed over the wide meads of Rohan; the white mists shimmered in the
watervales; and far off to the left, thirty leagues or more, blue and purple stood the White
Mountains, rising into peaks of jet, tipped with glimmering snows, flushed with the rose of
morning.
'Gondor! Gondor!' cried Aragorn. 'Would that I looked on you again in happier hour! Not yet
does my road lie southward to your bright streams.

Gondor! Gondor, between the Mountains and the Sea!
West Wind blew there; the light upon the Silver Tree
Fell like bright rain in gardens of the Kings of old.
O proud walls! White towers! O winged crown and throne of gold!
O Gondor, Gondor! Shall Men behold the Silver Tree,
Or West Wind blow again between the Mountains and the Sea?

Now let us go!' he said, drawing his eyes away from the South, and looking out west and north
to the way that he must tread.
The ridge upon which the companions stood went down steeply before their feet. Below it
twenty fathoms or more, there was a wide and rugged shelf which ended suddenly in the brink of a
sheer cliff: the East Wall of Rohan. So ended the Emyn Muil, and the green plains of the Rohirrim
stretched away before them to the edge of sight.
'Look!' cried Legolas, pointing up into the pale sky above them. 'There is the eagle again!
He is very high. He seems to be flying now away, from this land back to the North. He is going
with great speed. Look!'
'No, not even my eyes can see him, my good Legolas,' said Aragorn. 'He must be far aloft
indeed. I wonder what is his errand, if he is the same bird that I have seen before. But look! I


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