As the morning grows bright, the Company of the Ring stop walking and conceal themselves as best they can. They try to sleep. Thus begins the routine of their winter march: sleep during the day; supper in late afternoon; and an overnight walk south through bitter winter wind.

The Company of the Ring gathers on Rivendell’s threshold at dusk, with their baggage loaded on Bill the pony. Sam remembers that he hasn’t packed rope. Boromir sounds his horn. And Elrond gives his blessing: ‘May the stars shine upon your faces!’ They walk south into the Wild.

Today the Company will depart. Bilbo gives Frodo his sword Sting and—secretly—his magnificent Dwarvish mail-coat of pure mithril. The old hobbit sings softly. ‘I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see…’

Elrond names the Company of the Ring, from all the Free Peoples: Hobbits—Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Men—Aragorn and Boromir. Elves—Legolas. Dwarves—Gimli. And, one wizard—Gandalf the Grey shall lead them, ‘for this shall be his great task and maybe the end of his labours.’

In mid-December the scouts start returning to Rivendell, having found no trace of the Nazgûl. Elrond begins planning the Ring’s departure.

Elrond sends scouts to learn whether any Nazgûl still lurk near Rivendell. Bilbo notes that this will delay the journey until winter: ‘When winter first begins to bite and stones crack in the frosty night, when pools are black and trees are bare, ’tis evil in the Wild to fare.’

Sam cries out, ‘But you won’t send him off alone, surely, Master?’ Elrond appoints Sam the first member of the Company that will go with Frodo. Sam sits back down. ‘A nice pickle we have landed ourselves in, Mr. Frodo!’ The Council of Elrond is over.

Elrond cautions Frodo that, ‘It is a heavy burden. But if you take it freely, I will say that your choice is right; and though all the mighty elf-friends of old, Hador, and Húrin, and Túrin, and Beren himself were assembled together, your seat should be among them.’

The noon-bell rings. A silence. Frodo speaks. ‘I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.’ Elrond answers, ‘If you do not find a way, no one will. This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great.’

Bilbo offers to take the Ring to Mordor. ‘It is plain enough what you are pointing at. Bilbo the silly hobbit started this affair, and Bilbo had better finish it, or himself.’ Gandalf gently refuses his offer. Bilbo asks if the Council can please adjourn for lunch.

With all voices having spoken, Elrond resolves that the Elves must not flee west with the Ring. ‘Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril—to Mordor. We must send the Ring to the Fire.’

Gandalf finishes the story of his capture by Saruman the White, his escape, and his journey to Rivendell. ‘Well, the Tale is now told, from first to last. Here we all are, and here is the Ring. But we have not yet come any nearer to our purpose. What shall we do with it?’

Gandalf recounts the story of Gollum, from his finding the Ring more than five hundred years ago to his recent capture by Aragorn. Legolas, a woodland Elf, is dismayed: he’s been sent by his father to report that the Wood-elves were recently attacked—and that Gollum has escaped.

Elrond now asks Gandalf to speak. ‘I call upon him last, for it is the place of honour, and in all this matter he has been the chief.’ The wizard describes an ancient scroll in Gondor. It revealed how the One Ring can be known: when heated, its gold will glow with fiery letters.

Elrond calls first upon Bilbo, and then upon Frodo, to tell of their history with the Ring—from Bilbo’s riddles beneath the Misty Mountains to Frodo’s long journey to Rivendell. Bilbo whispers, ‘You would have made a good story of it, if they hadn’t kept on interrupting.’

Elrond tells the long story of the One Ring, from its forging in the Mountain of Fire, to its betrayal of Isildur at the Gladden Fields. Frodo is startled to learn that Elrond himself marched with Gil-Galad in the Last Alliance against Sauron, more than three thousand years ago.

Gandalf brings Frodo and Bilbo to one of the east porches of Rivendell for the Council of Elrond. Boromir, who arrived at dawn after a journey of nearly sixteen weeks from Gondor, gazes at them in wonder—are these the ‘Halflings’ of the rhyme for which he made this journey?

Bilbo sings for the Elves. ‘Eärendil was a mariner that tarried in Arvernien; he built a boat of timber felled in Nimbrethil to journey in; her sails he wove of silver fair, of silver were her lanterns made, her prow was fashioned like a swan, and light upon her banners laid…’

Elrond leads Frodo into Rivendell’s Hall of Fire. ‘Now at last the hour has come that you have wished for, Frodo. Here is a friend that you have long missed.’ Frodo and Bilbo meet again for the first time since Bilbo’s birthday departure from the Shire 17 years ago.

After Sam leads Frodo to the porch where Merry and Pippin are waiting, all four of them are seated at a feast celebrating Frodo’s recovery. Next to Frodo is the white-bearded dwarf Glóin, one of the twelve companions of Thorin Oakenshield on Bilbo’s adventure 77 years ago.

Frodo wakes. ‘Where am I?’ ‘In the House of Elrond. It is ten o’clock in the morning. The morning of October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know.’ ‘Gandalf!’ ‘Yes, I am here. And you are lucky to be here, too, after all the absurd things you have done since you left home.’

With Frodo’s condition growing ever more dire, Elrond again opens and searches the hobbit’s 17-day-old wound. He he finds and removes a splinter of the Morgul-knife from inside his shoulder. It has been moving towards his heart.

Frodo has not yet awakened. Sam remains by his side—often joined by Bilbo—as his condition worsens. Gandalf suspects that a fragment of the Morgul-knife is still inside, but none can be found.

Elves carry Frodo into the warmth and light of Rivendell—27 days after he stepped out of the front door of Bag End and locked it behind him. He is pale and cold, and doesn’t wake. Elrond begins working to heal him. Gandalf fears that Frodo may be fading beyond recall.

Elrond and Gandalf release the flood. The three Riders in the river are swept away. Glorfindel, Strider, and the other hobbits charge the remaining Riders from behind with burning torches. Their steeds panic and dash forward into the thundering water.

Just ahead of the nearest Rider, Asfaloth splashes into the Ford and carries Frodo across. The Nine pause at the water’s edge. The Nazgûl-Lord himself rides forward into the river. Frodo lifts his sword—‘By Elbereth and Lúthien the Fair, you shall have neither the Ring nor me!’

They are halfway to the Ford. Behind them, five Nazgûl ride into view, who compel Frodo rein in his horse and stop. Glorfindel yells: ‘Noro lim, noro lim, Asfaloth!’ The horse ignores the reins and gallops for the Ford. Four more Nazgûl spur from hiding and race to cut him off.

The afternoon is waning as the Road enters a grove of dark pines, cuts steeply down through red stone, and emerges on to the river’s wide floodplain. They see the Ford of Bruinen a mile ahead. Glorfindel hears hooves behind them. ‘Fly! The enemy is upon us!’

The hobbits are awake and walking at dawn. The Road bends downhill toward the Bruinen. Glorfindel counsels that ‘Our peril will be greatest just ere we reach the river; for my heart warns me that the pursuit is now swift behind us, and other danger may be waiting by the Ford.’

By nightfall the hobbits have covered almost twenty miles with Strider and Glorfindel. They are soon asleep.

After letting Strider and the hobbits sleep through more than four hours of daylight, Glorfindel wakes them and offers a drink from his flask. After a quick breakfast of bread and dried fruit, they press on east along the Road.

In the grey dawn, Glorfindel finally calls a halt to the long overnight march. Strider and the hobbits find some heather beside the Road and fall asleep, leaving Glorfindel on watch.

The Elven-lord Glorfindel, riding east along the Road, overtakes Strider and the hobbits. He puts Frodo on his horse and insists that they keep walking overnight. Frodo has slipped far enough into shadow that, to his eyes, Glorfindel is shining with light.

Sunset is approaching as Strider and the hobbits return to the Road after five difficult days in the hills. They hurry east as night falls.

After walking for eleven days—up north through the Ettenmoors and back south along the flanks of the Misty Mountains—Gandalf finally reaches Rivendell. He and Elrond start preparing a flood in case the Nazgûl try to cross the Bruinen.

Sam recites a rhyme before they hike south. ‘Troll sat alone on his seat of stone And munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near For meat was hard to come by. Done by! Gum by! In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone And meat was hard to come by…’

Pippin is surprised to find a path. Following it south, Strider and the hobbits discover an old cave filled with bones, and then find the three trolls—turned to stone—that nearly cooked 13 dwarves during Bilbo’s adventure 77 years ago. They have lunch in their shade.

Dawn brings bright clear skies. After climbing to look around with Merry, Strider leads the hobbits down off the ridge and south towards the Road. Once they reach more level ground, Frodo is able to ride again.

It’s already dusk as Strider and the weary hobbits reach the ridge. There’s not enough light for the climb down, so they make a fire in an old quarry pit and prepare to spend the night. Frodo is shivering. For the first time it seems to him that the visible world is fading.

Strider’s morning hike revealed that they are too far north, so he and the hobbits have spent the day struggling east, then following a valley southeast. Now the valley has dead-ended in a high ridge. They decide to attempt the climb despite Frodo’s wound.

After two wet days, the rain has finally stopped. The hobbits wait in camp after breakfast while Strider climbs to higher ground to learn where their hike has brought them.

Strider and the hobbits camp against a cliff for protection from the rain. They have food for only a few more days. Frodo’s wound is growing more painful.

After five days of searching the lands west of the River Hoarwell, Glorfindel finds the trail of Strider and the hobbits. He follows it back east across the Last Bridge.

Strider and the hobbits are soaked with rain. Steep hills now force them north instead of east—adding miles to their journey that take them no nearer to Rivendell, while lengthening the march that they will have to make back south to the Road.

A west wind today has brought steady rain to the hills through which Strider and the hobbits are struggling eastward. Strider is unable to light a fire because of the damp.

Leaving the hobbits concealed, Strider steps out on to the Last Bridge. There are no Nazgûl. He finds the beryl stone that Glorfindel left two days ago. Strider leads the hobbits across the bridge, then off the Road into the stony hills to its north.

Strider and the hobbits reach a high ridge. The final stages of their journey are now in view: they can see a curve of the River Hoarwell, and beyond it the Road running along the southern edges of wooded hills. In the far distance is the rocky gorge of the Bruinen.

Now that Strider and the hobbits are five days out from Weathertop, he turns their course north-east to return to the Road—where the Last Bridge offers the only way across the River Hoarwell.

Two days’ ride west of Rivendell, Glorfindel reaches the Last Bridge over the River Hoarwell and finds it guarded by three Nazgûl. He chases them westward, leaving a beryl stone on the bridge to mark his passage.

News reaches Rivendell of events in the Shire a fortnight ago: of Nazgûl on the heels of the hobbit Frodo, who carries a burden east without the help of Gandalf. Elrond sends Elves riding in several directions. He sends the Elven-lord Glorfindel riding west along the Road itself.