Timeline Event
Théoden rides from Harrowdale for Minas Tirith
Event Type: Military/Strategic
Age: 3rd Age - Ring War
Date: March 10, 3019
Description:
An event in the prelude to the Siege of Minas Tirith and the Battle of the Pelennor; see those entries for an overview:
[The] king sat upon his white horse.... Proud and tall he seemed... and many marvelled at him and took heart to see him unbent and unafraid.
There... were marshalled in many companies well nigh five and fifty hundreds of Riders fully armed.... A single trumpet sounded. The king raised his hand, and then silently the host of the Mark began to move....
On down the grey road they went... and so... the great ride into the East began....
It was indeed in deepening gloom that the king came to Edoras, although it was then but noon.... There he halted only a short while and strengthened his host by some three score of Riders that came late to the weapontake. Now... he wished his esquire a kindly farewell....
Merry bowed and went away unhappily, and stared at the lines of horsemen. Already the companies were preparing to start: men were tightening girths, looking to saddles, caressing their horses; some gazed uneasily at the lowering sky. Unnoticed a Rider came up and spoke softly in the hobbit's ear....
'You wish to go whither the Lord of the Mark goes: I see it in your face.... [You] shall go with me,' said the Rider. 'I will bear you before me, under my cloak until we are far afield, and this darkness is yet darker. Such good will should not be denied.'....
'Thank you, sir, though I do not know your name.'
'Do you not?' said the Rider softly. 'Then call me Dernhelm.'
Thus it came to pass that when the king set out, before Dernhelm sat Meriadoc the hobbit, and the great grey steed Windfola made little of the burden; for Dernhelm was less in weight than many men....
On into the shadow they rode. In the willow-thickets where Snowbourn flowed into Entwash, twelve leagues 1 east of Edoras, they camped that night.
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 5, The Ride of the Rohirrim
Notes
1 A league is approximately three miles.
Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 1, The Disaster of the Gladden Fields: Appendix, Númenórean Linear Measures
Contributors:
Elena Tiriel 13Sep04, 8Mar08