Isengard
"My business is with Isengard tonight. With rock and stone!"
Treebeard
The two young hobbit's first glimpse of Isengard is seen when they are being carried in one of Treebeard's great boughs. From there they can see the large circular wall of stone with a high pinnacle rising from it's centre. The circular grounds of Isengard are pitted with holes and chasms from which smoke and fire pours out. This place has been Saruman's stronghold for many years although recently he has started putting his mind towards evil practices and ill deeds. It had been Saruman's plan to send out armies of his Uruk-hai to capture the hobbits and take the One Ring as his own.
Once they reach Isengard the Ents get to work, tearing down the walls surrounding the grounds and knocking the Orcs who come to stop them out of the way. Though they are slow moving the Ents are fearsome and become quite fired up, and even throw themselves against the smooth rocks of Orthanc in an attempt to bring the tower down.
Merry and Pippin watch as the Orcs do their best to fight back against the Ents and although they are not successful in their fight they do manage to harm many of the Ents by setting them on fire and pulling them down. Finally the Ents manage to break the dam which has prevented water from washing the fires of Isengard away. This not only extinguishes the fires working the machinery and creating weapons far below in the roots of Isengard, but it also washes away and drowns the Orcs who were preventing the Ents from getting on with their task.
Following this the whole of Isengard is flooded with deep water and so Merry and Pippin are forced to sit up on the ruined walls to wait for the water level to go down. While they are waiting they explore some of the now abandoned corridors and tunnels through the walls and find a great stash of food and two barrels of Hobbit-Weed! This is good enough for them and so they happily sit down on the walls to await the visitors that Treebeard told them to expect.
Below are four barrels found by Merry and Pippin.
Inside two of them is rotten fruit.
Inside one of them is a picture of a mistake in the Lord of the Rings films.
Inside one of them is the password into Mordor.
Choose carefully, you only get one guess per month.
Fill in the form below to submit your guess.
What about the others?
Continue with the final stretch of the journey
Return to Cirith Ennor