NOW the banners of the Wolf flapped and rippled over the heads of the
Woodlanders and the Men of the Wolf; and the men shot all they might, nor
took heed now to cover themselves against the shafts of the Dusky Men.
As for these, for all they were so many, their arrow-shot was no great
matter, for they were in very evil order, as has been said; and moreover,
their rage was so great to come to handy strokes with these foemen, that
some of them flung away their bows to brandish the axe or the sword.
Nevertheless were some among the kindred hurt or slain by their arrows.
Now stood Face-of-god with the foremost; and from where he stood he could
see somewhat of the battle of the Dalesmen, and he wotted that it was
thriving; therefore he looked before him and close around him, and noted
what was toward there. The space betwixt the houses and the break of the
bent was crowded with the fury of the Dusky Men tossing their weapons
aloft, crying to each other and at the kindred, and here and there
loosing a bow-string on them; but whatever was their rage they might not
come a many together past a line within ten fathom of the bent’s end; for
three hundred of the best of bowmen were shooting at them so ceaselessly
that no Dusky man was safe of any bare place of his body, and they fell
over one another in that penfold of slaughter, and for all their madness
did but little.
Yet was the heart of the War-leader troubled; for he wotted that it might
not last for ever, and there seemed no end to the throng of
murder-carles; and the time would come when the arrowshot would be spent,
and they must needs come to handy strokes, and that with so many.
Now a voice spake to him as he gazed with knitted brows and careful heart
on that turmoil of battle:
‘What now hast thou done with the Sun-beam, and where is her brother? Is
the Chief of the Wolf skulking when our work is so heavy? And thou
meseemeth art overlate on the field: the mowing of this meadow is no
sluggard’s work.’
He turned and beheld Bow-may, and gazed on her face for a moment, and saw
her eyes how they glittered, and how the pommels of her cheeks were
burning red and her lips dry and grey; but before he answered he looked
all round about to see what was to note; and he touched Bow-may on the
shoulder and pointed to down below where a man of the Felons had just
come out of the court of one of the houses: a man taller than most, very
gaily arrayed, with gilded scales all over him, so that, with his dark
face and blue eyes, he looked like some strange dragon. Bow-may spake
not, but stamped her foot with anger. Yet if her heart were hot, her
hand was steady; for she notched a shaft, and just as the Dusky Chief
raised his axe and brandished it aloft, she loosed, and the shaft flew
and smote the felon in the armpit and the default of the armour, and he
fell to earth. But even as she loosed, Face-of-god cried out in a loud
voice:
‘O lads of battle! shoot close and all together. Tarry not, tarry not!
for we need a little time ere sword meets sword, and the others of the
kindreds are at work!’
But Bow-may turned round to him and said: ‘Wilt thou not answer me?
Where is thy kindness gone?’
Even as she was speaking she had notched and loosed another shaft,
speaking as folk do who turn from busy work at loom or bench.
Then said Face-of-god: ‘Shoot on, sister Bow-may! The Sun-beam is gone
with her brother, and he is with the Men of the Face.’
He broke off here, for a man fell beside him hurt in the neck, and
Face-of-god took his bow from his hands and shot a shaft, while one of
the women who had been hurt also tended the newly-wounded man. Then
Face-of-god went on speaking:
‘She was unwilling to go, but Folk-might and I constrained her; for we
knew that this is the most perilous place of the battle—hah! see those
three felons, Bow-may! they are aiming hither.’
And again he loosed and Bow-may also, but a shaft rattled on his helm
withal and another smote a Woodlander beside him, and pierced through the
calf of his leg, as he turned and stooped to take fresh arrows from a
sheaf that lay there; but the carle took it by the notch and the point,
and brake it and drew it out, and then stood up and went on shooting.
And Face-of-god spake again:
‘Folk-might skulketh not; nor the Men of the Vine, and the Sickle, and
the Face, nor the Shepherd-Folk: soon shall they be making our work easy
to us, if we can hold our own till then. They are on the other roads
that lead into the square. Now suffer me, and shoot on!’
Therewith he looked round about him, and he saw on the left hand that all
was quiet; and before him was the confused throng of the Dusky Men
trampling their own dead and wounded, and not able as yet to cross that
death-line of the arrow so near to them. But on his right hand he saw
how they of the kindreds held them firm on the way. Then for a moment of
time he considered and thought, till him-seemed he could see the whole
battle yet to be foughten; and his face flushed, and he said sharply:
‘Bow-may, abide here and shoot, and show the others where to shoot, while
the arrows hold out; but we will go further for a while, and ye shall
follow when we have made the rent great enough.’
She turned to him and said: ‘Why art thou not more joyous? thou art like
an host without music or banners.’
‘Nay,’ said he, ‘heed not me, but my bidding!’
She said hastily: ‘I think I shall die here; since for all we have shot
we minish them nowise. Now kiss me this once amidst the battle, and say
farewell.’
He said: ‘Nay, nay; it shall not go thus. Abide a little while, and thou
shalt see all this tangle open, as the sun cleaveth the clouds on the
autumn morning. Yet lo thou! since thou wilt have it so.’
And he bent forward and kissed her face, and now the tears ran over it,
and she said smiling somewhat: ‘Now is this more than I looked for,
whatso may betide.’
But while she was yet speaking he cried in a great voice:
‘Ye who have spent your shot, or have nigh spent it, to axe and sword,
and follow me to clear the ground ’twixt the bent and the halls. Let
each help each, but throng not each other. Shoot wisely, ye bowmen, and
keep our backs clear of the foe. On, on! for the Burg and the Face, for
the Burg and the Face!’
Therewith he leapt down the steep of the hill, bounding like the hart,
with Dale-warden naked in his hand; and they that followed were two score
and ten; and the arrows of their bowmen rained over their heads on the
Dusky Men, as they smote down the first of the foemen, and the others
shrieked and shrank from them, or turned on them smiting wildly and
desperately.
But Face-of-god swept round the great sword and plunged into that sea of
turmoil and noise and evil sights and savours, and even therewith he
heard clearly a voice that said: ‘Goldring, I am hurt; take my bow a
while!’ and knew it for Bow-may’s; but it came to his ears like the song
of a bird without meaning; for it was as if his life were changed at
once; and in a minute or two he had cut thrice with the edge and thrust
twice with the point, eager, but clear-eyed and deft; and he saw as in a
picture the foe before him, and the grey roofs of Silver-stead, and
through the gap in them the tops of the blue ridges far aloof. And now
had three fallen before him, and they feared him, and turned on him, and
smote so many together that their strokes crossed each other, and one
warded him from the other; and he laughed aloud and shielded himself, and
drave the point of Dale-warden amidst the tangle of weapons through the
open mouth of a captain of the Felons, and slashed a cheek with a
back-stroke, and swept round the edge to his right hand and smote off a
blue-eyed snub-nosed head; and therewith a pole-axe smote him on the left
side of his helm, so that he tottered; but he swung himself round, and
stood stark and upright, and gave a short hack with the edge, keeping
Dale-warden well in hand, and a gold-clad felon, a champion of them, and
their tallest on the ground, fell aback, his throat gaping more than the
mouth of him.
Then Face-of-god shouted and waved Dale-warden aloft to the Banner of the
Wolf that floated behind and above him, and he cried out: ‘As I have
promised so have I done!’ And he looked about, and beheld how valiantly
his fellows had been doing; for before him now was a space of earth with
no man standing on his feet thereon, like the swathe of the mowers of
June; and beyond that was the crowd of the Dusky Men wavering like the
tall grass abiding the scythe.
But a minute, and they fell to casting at Face-of-god and his fellows
spears and knives and shields and whatsoever would fly; and a spear smote
him on the breast, but entered not; and a bossed shield fell over his
face withal, and a plummet of sling-lead smote his helm, and he fell to
earth; but leapt up again straightway, and heard as he arose a great
shout close to him, and a shrill cry, and lo! at his left side Bow-may,
her sword in her hand, and the hand red with blood from a shaft-graze on
her wrist, and a white cloth stained with blood about her neck; and on
his right side Wood-wise bearing the banner and crying the Wolf-whoop;
for the whole company was come down from the slope and stood around him.
Then for a little while was there such a stilling of the tumult about him
there, that he heard great and glad cries from the Road of the South of
‘The Burg and the Steer! The Dale and the Bridge! The Dale and the
Bull!’ And thereafter a terrible great shrieking cry, and a huge voice
that cried: ‘Death, death, death to the Dusky Men!’ And thereafter again
fierce cries and great tumult of the battle.
Then Face-of-god shook Dale-warden in the air, and strode forward
fiercely, but not speedily, and the whole company went foot for foot
along with him; and as he went, would he or would he not, song came into
his mouth, a song of the meadows of the Dale, even such as this:
The wheat is done blooming and rust’s on the sickle,
And green are the meadows grown after the scythe.
Come, hands for the dance! For the toil hath been mickle,
And ’twixt haysel and harvest ’tis time to be blithe.
And what shall the tale be now dancing is over,
And kind on the meadow sits maiden by man,
And the old man bethinks him of days of the lover,
And the warrior remembers the field that he wan?
Shall we tell of the dear days wherein we are dwelling,
The best days of our Mother, the cherishing Dale,
When all round about us the summer is telling,
To ears that may hearken, the heart of the tale?
Shall we sing of these hands and these lips that caress us,
And the limbs that sun-dappled lie light here beside,
When still in the morning they rise but to bless us,
And oft in the midnight our footsteps abide?
O nay, but to tell of the fathers were better,
And of how we were fashioned from out of the earth;
Of how the once lowly spurned strong at the fetter;
Of the days of the deeds and beginning of mirth.
And then when the feast-tide is done in the morning,
Shall we whet the grey sickle that bideth the wheat,
Till wan grow the edges, and gleam forth a warning
Of the field and the fallow where edges shall meet.
And when cometh the harvest, and hook upon shoulder
We enter the red wheat from out of the road,
We shall sing, as we wend, of the bold and the bolder,
And the Burg of their building, the beauteous abode.
As smiteth the sickle amid the sun’s burning
We shall sing how the sun saw the token unfurled,
When forth fared the Folk, with no thought of returning,
In the days when the Banner went wide in the world.
Many saw that he was singing, but heard not the words of his mouth, for
great was the noise and clamour. But he heard Bow-may, how she laughed
by his side, and cried out:
‘Gold-mane, dear-heart, now art thou merry indeed; and glad am I, though
they told me that I am hurt.—Ah! now beware, beware!’
For indeed the Dusky Men, seeing the wall of steel rolling down on them,
and cooped up by the houses, so that they scarce knew how to flee, turned
in the face of death, the foremost of them, and rushed furiously on the
array of the Woodlanders, and all those behind pressed on them like the
big wave of the ebbing sea when the gust of the wind driveth it landward.
The Woodlanders met them, shouting out: ‘The Greenwood and the Wolf, the
Greenwood and the Wolf!’ But not a few of them fell there, though they
gave not back a foot; for so fierce now were the Dusky Men, that hewing
and thrusting at them availed nought, unless they were slain outright or
stunned; and even if they fell they rolled themselves up against their
tall foe-men, heeding not death or wounds if they might but slay or
wound. There then fell War-grove and ten others of the Woodlanders, and
four men of the Wolf, but none before he had slain his foeman; and as
each man fell or was hurt grievously, another took his place.
Now a felon leapt up and caught Gold-ring by the neck and drew him down,
while another strove to smite his head off; but the stout carle drave a
wood-knife into the side of the first felon, and drew it out speedily and
smote the other, the smiter, in the face with the same knife, and
therewith they all three rolled together on the earth amongst the feet of
men. Even so did another felon by Bow-may, and dragged her down to the
ground, and smote her with a long knife as she tumbled down; and this was
a feat of theirs, for they were long-armed like apes.
But as to this felon, Dale-warden’s edge split his skull, and Face-of-god
gathered his might together and bestrode Bow-may, till he had hewed a
space round about him with great two-handed strokes; and yet the blade
brake not. Then he caught up Bow-may from the earth, and the felon’s
knife had not pierced her hauberk, but she was astonied, and might not
stand upon her feet; and Face-of-god turned aside a little with her, and
half bore her, half thrust her through the throng to the rearward of his
folk, and left her there with two carlines of the Wolf who followed the
host for leechcraft’s sake, and then turned back shouting: ‘For the Face,
for the Face!’ and there followed him back to the battle, a band of those
who were fresh as yet, and their blades unbloodied, the young men of the
Woodlands.
The wearier fighters made way for them as they came on shouting, and
Face-of-god was ahead of them all, and leapt at the foemen as a man
unwearied and striking his first stroke, so wondrous hale he was; and
they drave a wedge amidst of the Dusky Men, and then turned about and
stood back to back hewing at all that drifted on them. But as
Face-of-god cleared a space about him, lo! almost within reach of his
sword-point up rose a grim shape from the earth, tall, grey-haired, and
bloody-faced, who uttered the Wolf-whoop from amidst the terror of his
visage, and turned and swung round his head an axe of the Dusky Men, and
fell to smiting them with their own weapon. The Dusky Men shrieked in
answer to his whoop, and all shrunk from him and Face-of-god; but a cry
of joy went up from the kindred, for they knew Gold-ring, whom they
deemed had been slain. So they all pressed on together, smiting down the
foe before them, and the Dusky Men, some turned their backs and drave
those behind them, till they too turned and were strained through the
passages and courts of the houses, and some were overthrown and trodden
down as they strove to hold face to the Woodlanders, and some were hewn
down where they stood; but the whole throng of those that were on their
feet drifted toward the Market-place, the Woodlanders following them ever
with point and edge, till betwixt the bent and the houses no foeman stood
up against them.
Then they stood together, and raised the whoop of victory, and blew their
horns long and loud in token of their joy, and the Woodland men lifted up
their voices and sang:
Now far, far aloof
Standeth lintel and roof,
The dwelling of days
Of the Woodland ways:
Now nought wendeth there
Save the wolf and the bear,
And the fox of the waste
Faring soft without haste.
No carle the axe whetteth on oak-laden hill;
No shaft the hart letteth to wend at his will;
None heedeth the thunder-clap over the glade,
And the wind-storm thereunder makes no man afraid.
Is it thus then that endeth man’s days on Mid-earth,
For no man there wendeth in sorrow or mirth?
Nay, look down on the road
From the ancient abode!
Betwixt acre and field
Shineth helm, shineth shield.
And high over the heath
Fares the bane in his sheath;
For the wise men and bold
Go their ways o’er the wold.
Now the Warrior hath given them heart and fair day,
Unbidden, undriven, they fare to the fray.
By the rock and the river the banners they bear,
And their battle-staves quiver ’neath halbert and spear;
On the hill’s brow they gather, and hang o’er the Dale
As the clouds of the Father hang, laden with bale.
Down shineth the sun
On the war-deed half done;
All the fore-doomed to die,
In the pale dust they lie.
There they leapt, there they fell,
And their tale shall we tell;
But we, e’en in the gate
Of the war-garth we wait,
Till the drift of war-weather shall whistle us on,
And we tread all together the way to be won,
To the dear land, the dwelling for whose sake we came
To do deeds for the telling of song-becrowned fame.
Settle helm on the head then! Heave sword for the Dale!
Nor be mocked of the dead men for deedless and pale.