About halfway through running on the path, we began to slow down. The way across was really long. Now that we were about halfway across, we could see that the way out was blocked by two tall black gates. We slowed into a jog, so we could catch our breath. I was trying to catch up to Merry so I could "tag" him. Merry stopped jogging, and so did I. The path was too hard to run through because the path was filled with tree stumps, thorns, and spiky brambles. We had to be careful not to step on any.

"Tag," I said tiredly tapping Merry on his shoulder.

After that, we walked in silence for a while catching our breath after the long run. As we looked at the black gates that we were getting closer, we noticed there were no orcs, trolls, or any sort of creature guarding it. The black gate reached about 60 feet into the sky. Very tall.

Surrounding Orthanc was a circular black wall. There were pillar type objects that were built into the wall too. Half of the pillars were on the outside of Isengard and the other half was on the inside. We reached the gate and stared up.

"What do we..." I started. I was cut off by the gates opening loudly.

"Yikes!" Merry said and pulled me away to one of the black half pillars in the wall.

We hid on the side of one, but easily could be spotted if whoever came through the gates turned around our way. We were trying to be as flat to the wall as we could. Yelling immediately began as soon as five orcs came in through the gate. One of the orcs was pulling a rope with a nasty looking creature tied to it.

The creature had three eyes, small nose, a long furry tail, and crawled on all fours. It kept snarling and biting the rope tied to its neck. It would stop completely every now and then to smell the air.

"I can't wait to see what master does to you!" one orc spat.

"You will wish you were never alive... stop squirming!" the orc said that was pulling the creature.

It was alarming to see how close they all were to us. I was surprised they couldn't smell us or something. They were all moving at a very slow pace, due to the creatures struggling. We were practically right next to them, just divided by the half pillar.

"One prisoner found, two to go!" the third orc snarled.

One of the orcs started to shut the gate. If we didn't go now, we wouldn't get out at all. So we had to try.

Merry looked to me and said, "Pippin...run!" he grabbed my good arm and we both flew through the gates open crack as fast as we could.

The orc that had been closing the gate made a really strange gurgling noise and screamed something orcish alerting the other four orcs. I turned around and saw three orcs, swords in hand, running after us. They were quite fast and were gaining on us.

"Don't look back, just run!" Merry said urgently. 

A second after he said that, he yelped and grabbed his neck with his other hand. he pulled out a little silver thorn. Not thinking much, he threw it on the ground and ignored the sudden urge of sleepiness. 

On one side of us there was a giant field of boulders and on the other, there was along slow moving river. Merry still pulling me, directed me into the direction of the boulders. The boulders were taller than the orcs and very wide. Merry started zig zagging in between boulders and all over the place trying to get rid of the orcs on our tail. I almost ran into a boulder at one point.

I don't know about Merry, but I was getting pretty tired of all the running. We soon came to an enormous boulder, much bigger than any in the rest of the field. The boulder had a large hole on one side of it, almost looked like a mini cave. The yelling of the orcs was getting louder, so we decided to take shelter in the boulder for a while.

The boulder was quite unique. We jumped inside and kneeled down on our knees. Only our heads peeked out from inside of the boulder. It was dark enough that nobody could see us inside. We could hear the orcs coming so we ducked our heads just in case. It was a very tight fit for us both to fit inside, but good thing we were Hobbits.

A sudden shout of an orc made me jump, "Where are they!?"

A horn went off a moment later. I covered one of my ears with one hand and the other I couldn't move. After the horn went off, it got pretty quiet. The only noise I heard was rapid footsteps from above and my own heartbeat. I could feel my head pounding along with the tingling of my hurt arms. We just stayed there not sure what to do. The only light we saw was the diming sun that was now going down.