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The rock was cleared. Then Aragorn and his men turned to run back within the gates while there was yet time. His men had passed within, when again the lightning flashed. Thunder crashed. From among the fallen at the top of the causeway three huge orcs sprang up - the white hand could be seen on their shields. Men shouted warning from the gates, and Aragorn for an instant turned. At that moment the foremost of the orcs hurled a stone: it struck him on the helm and he stumbled, falling to his knee. The thunder rolled.
    Before he could get up and back the three orcs were upon him.

    Here this story was overtaken by that of the sortie from the postern.
    In the final manuscript form of this, Aragorn, looking at the gates, added after the words (TT p. 139) 'Their great hinges and iron bars were wrenched and bent; many of their timbers were cracked': 'The doors will not withstand another such battering.' These words were left out of the typescript that followed, but there is nothing in the manuscript to suggest that they should be, and it seems clear that their omission was an error (especially since they give point to Eomer's reply: 'Yet we cannot stay here beyond the walls to defend them').
    Gimli's cry as he sprang on the Orcs who had fallen on Eomer: Baruk Khazad! Khazad ai-menu! appears in this form from the first writing of the scene. Years later, after the publication of LR, my father began on an analysis of all fragments of other languages (Quenya, Sindarin, Khuzdul, the Black Speech) found in the book, but unhappily before he had reached the end of FR the notes, at the outset full and elaborate, had diminished to largely uninterpretable jottings. Baruk he here translated as 'axes', without further comment; ai-menu is analysed as aya, menu, but the meanings are not clearly legible: most probably aya 'upon', menu 'acc. pl. you'.
    A curious point arises in Gimli's remark after his rescue of Eomer during the sortie from the postern gate (TT p. 140): 'Till now I have hewn naught but wood since I left Moria.' This is clearly inconsistent with Legolas' words in 'The Departure of Boromir', when he and Gimli came upon Aragorn beside Boromir's body near Parth Galen:
    'We have hunted and slain many Orcs in the woods'; compare also the draft of a later passage (VII.386) where, when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli set out in pursuit of the Orcs, Gimli says: '... those that attacked Boromir were not the only ones. Legolas and I met some away southwards on the west slopes of Amon Hen. We slew many, creeping on them among the trees ...' I do not think that any

    'explanation' of this will serve: it is simply an inconsistency never observed.(21)
    The 'wild hill-men' at the assault on Helm's Deep came from
    'Westfold', valleys on the western side of the Misty Mountains (see p. 8 and note 4), and this application of 'Westfold' survived until a late stage of revision of the manuscript: it was still present in drafting for what became 'The Road to Isengard'.(22) Until the change in application was made, the Westfold Vale was called 'the Westmarch Vale'.
    In this connection there are two notable passages. The dialogue between Aragorn and Eomer and Gamling the Westmarcher on the Deeping Wall, hearing the cries of the wild men below (TT p. 142), takes this form in a rejected draft:

    'I hear them,' said Eomer; 'but they are only as the scream of birds and the bellowing of beasts to my ears.'
    'Yet among them are many that cry in the tongue of Westfold
    [later > in the Dunland tongue],' said Aragorn; 'and that is a speech of men, and once was accounted good to hear.'
    'True words you speak,' said Gamling, who had climbed now on the wall. 'I know that tongue. It is ancient, and once was spoken in many valleys of the Mark. But now it is used in deadly hate. They shout rejoicing in our doom. "The king, the king!"
    they cry. "We will take their king! Death to the Forgoil! Death to the Strawheads! Death to the robbers of the North." Such names they have for