Insults flew. Freca drew a dagger. Helm, unarmed, stepped forward. One punch—a single, terrible blow from the Hammerhand—caved in Freca’s skull. He died on the council floor.
But hunger gnawed deeper. Léof, Héra’s secret love, volunteered to ride for Gondor. “Three days to the Mering Stream,” he whispered to her. “If I return, I return with help.”
One night, Helm ventured out and did not return. At dawn, Héra found him standing at the gate, frozen solid, still gripping a Dunlending chieftain he had strangled. The enemy saw him and fled in terror. But the legend of Helm Hammerhand ended there. The Lord of the Rings- The War of the Rohirrim ...
Wulf said nothing. He bowed, collected his father’s body, and rode into the snow. But his eyes promised a winter of woe.
She devised a desperate plan. The Hornburg had a secret drain—a narrow culvert that led from the keep to the base of the ravine. While Wulf prepared a final assault, Héra led thirty riders through the icy water, emerging behind the enemy camp. Insults flew
Freca proposed a union: Wulf would marry Héra, and in return, Freca’s lands would be merged with the crown, making Wulf the heir. Helm laughed, a sound like grinding stone. “You come with a beggar’s bowl and call it a crown? My daughter is not a prize for a wolf pup.”
In the dying days of the Third Age, Rohan basked in an uneasy peace. King Helm Hammerhand, a towering bull of a man with fists like iron, ruled from his golden hall in Edoras. His sons, Hama and Haleth, were valiant warriors. His daughter, Héra, was a spirit of the wild grasses—more comfortable on a horse than a throne, and more skilled with a blade than any tapestry needle. Léof, Héra’s secret love, volunteered to ride for Gondor
With Wulf dead, the Dunlending army broke. They scattered into the mountains, and Rohan was saved.
