And still the shafts rained down on that throng from the Bent of the
Bowmen, for another two score men of the Woodlanders had crept down
the hill to them, and shafts failed them not. But the Dusky Men
about the altar, for all their terror, or even maybe because of it,
now began to turn upon the scarce-seen foemen, and to press up wildly
toward the hill-side, though as it were without any order or aim.
Every man of them had his weapons, and those no mere gilded toys, but
their very tools of battle; and some, but no great number, had their
bows with them and a few shafts; and these began to shoot at
whatsoever they could see on the hill-side, but at first so wildly
and hurriedly that they did no harm.
It must be said of them that at first only those about the altar fell
on toward the hill; for those about the road that led southward knew
not what had betided nor whither to turn. So that at this beginning
of the battle, of all the thousands in the great Place it was but a
few hundreds that set on the Bent of the Bowmen, and at these the
bowmen of the kindreds shot so close and so wholly together that they
fell one over another in the narrow ways between the houses whereby
they must needs go to gather on the plain ground betwixt the backs of
the houses and the break of the hill-side.
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