HOW THEY FLED.
Dawn was at hand, and things began to loom through the blackness of mirk
night. Gartnaidh snored on where he fell; but the gate-guards lay in
their places, whether sleeping or waking the children could not know; and
none could open the gate without stirring them.
Thorstein looked over the bulwarks and down into the gill. Black it was
down yonder; and even the waterfall, into which he was used to throw
stones for pastime, on the fellside over against them, had dwindled so
that the white of it hardly showed. Beneath him the rock went sheer down
for a space; and underneath, he knew that there were tufts of heather
and saplings growing out of the scree-side that sloped from the crag.
He stole breathless to one of the chambers where some little store of
bedding and apparel lay, and brought out a bundle of girdlethongs and
such like, and began to tie them into a line. But they were scantly
enough to loop round a big stone, and to reach thence to the wall edge
and a very little way overboard. He went back for an armful of skins: but
how to rip them up into thongs without a knife?
Then Raineach crept up to the giant, and loosed his sword in the sheath:
and as she rattled it, he gave a great groan: and she let go. But he sank
into sleep again, and she drew it out. They cut the skins into strips,
and knotted their line in haste, with trembling hands, and threw it over
the wall.
Raineach sat on the edge, and clinging tight to the line, slid down
hand under hand, fending herself off the crag with her feet, until they
touched the rough scree-slope. Down came Thorstein, with the giant’s
sword thrust naked through his girdle behind. Her heart beat lest the
line should break, or the stones come away from the wall-coping upon them
both: but at last he stood beside her, and they stumbled down the long
slide of ruin to the gill. There was just light enough for them to cross
it without being carried down the stream; and they scrambled up the other
side on the grassy bank of the waterfall as steep as a hillside can be,
all under those terrible hanging crags, in the glimmering dawn and the
thunder-mist.
Then there was a roar and a crash, and splinters of stone flew about
them. They saw the giant’s head over the bulwarks against the sky, and
his long arms whirling as he took aim at them again. She screamed and
they ran up-bank on hands and knees while the stones flew, and the curses
and threats with them. But they never looked behind again until they were
a good step out of the deepest of the ravine, and well up towards the
moor, where the ground was not so dangerously steep; none the worse yet
except for cutting their shins on the scree, and tearing their faces in
the blackthorn bushes.
They stopped for breath, and a last sight of their prison: but they
stopped only a moment, for the gate was opened and folk were running
after them in the grey mist across the tongue of land. So they plunged
into the birches and the bogs, and crept through the underwood, and waded
through the tottermoss, startling the hag-worms beneath and the wild fowl
above, as they beat their way up and ahead, hoping only to be lost and
out of sight.
Then they came to a high ridge, with piked rocks standing on it, from
which they could see that their homeward course was plain, over a great
swamp and a bleak tarn, and along the green mountains beyond it. But
from their rock they could trace the giant not so far behind, making
his way through the wood, which was harder for him to force than for
the lithe light bodies that could slip between its boughs, and over its
half-dried, cracking mire-holes in which his bulk and weight stuck and
sank continually. And yet he went at it with main strength, swinging his
club and hewing a passage.
Down from their peak they flitted, and up he came from the other side,
shadowy against the lurid sunrise. With a shout he strode over the edge,
taking great steps against the sky, while they were lost in the maze of
oozy rills, too broad for them to jump, and too deep and too treacherous
to wade. While they looked wildly for their crossings, he leapt the
ditches and gained on them, until at last he whirled his club round his
head, and it flew hurtling through the air. They fell flat in the mire,
and it skimmed close over them. Then they struggled to their feet and ran
neck and neck for Blea tarn. Thorstein plunged in, dragging her after
him, and struck out for the other side, sorely weighed down by her head
on his shoulder, and well nigh choked by her grip round his neck; for she
was no swimmer, and gasped and struggled in the black water. He landed
her, though, upon a shoal, and up the bank they fled, on firmer ground
now, and with a clear way before them and treeless, over stones and
grass, forward and upward to Ullscarf.
But a terrible roar came up from the tarn; and they looked back, and
saw the giant near the middle of it, fighting with the black water, and
lashing it into foaming waves that circled and spread until all the
mere was in a turmoil. And then his head went under: but he rose again,
flapping and battling like a wounded heron. Then he sank again, and once
more came to the surface, drifting like a log in an eddy. And then the
water closed over him, black and calm, and the pattern of the mountain
tops began to take shape where he had been. The children stood fixed
to the spot. A stream of bubbles rose, and burst; and the reflections
joined again. Raineach turned suddenly on Thorstein and dealt him a blow
that felled him to the ground: she burst into a passion of weeping, as
she flung herself beside him. “Thou hast killed my father,” she wailed:
“I hate thee, I hate thee!”
Thorstein was in no mood to say good or bad to her, so utterly weary was
he: least of all to make love-speeches. He lay awhile, and the tarn-water
ran from him upon the grass.
“Listen, Raineach,” he said at last: “I hear the shouts of the men that
follow us afar.”
“O lad,” she cried, “dear lad, take me with thee.”
So they climbed the ridge, and held by it on the farther side, hidden
from their pursuers, and saw them no more.
But now the day had broken, a dismal day of thunder mist and gathering
storm. The highest tops were lost, not in their homely cloud-caps, but
fading away into black vapour; and through the rents in it the sun
shot beams of coppery and swarthy sheen, down into the smoky dells and
tumbling precipices, that seemed to ditch their moorland road on either
hand. The long rise and fall of Ullscarf before them looked like a vast
bridge in the air, and leading nowhither but into darkness. Far to the
right, gaps in the gloom showed awful edges of mountain, rolling and
plunging along the skyline, as wheels that moved, great toppling balls
advancing slowly over hill and dale, wayward and unescapable. Nigher at
hand were huge monsters, mis-shapen and grey and foul to see; many-headed
things, with eyes and crests and spiny backs, crouching along the naked
ground, among white and bleaching bones in the black soil. And when the
children came nearer, hoping to slip by, for there was no other way,
these things became great boulders, as it might be images of unknown
dragons of dreamland, or they were weird tussocks of grass on black and
embattled towers and pinnacles of crumbling peat, that took the shape of
laidly worms and all the terrors of winter-night tales.
They won their way over the bridge in air, down through the silky green
mosses and heatherless moor-grasses, to Greenup raise: for they dared
not try the valleys on either hand in fear of losing the only way they
knew, the safe and solitary ridge that must bring them southward and
homeward. But the darkness deepened, and then came a flash and an instant
crack and roar that sent them speeding upward in panic. Then the storm
began, flash upon flash of blue light, terrifying and bewildering, as
they scudded through the din and rattle of hail, blindly seeking shelter:
and dashed into a nook of white shattered rocks, an island on the great
heaving billow of moor. As they crushed themselves into the bield, some
ugly beast with a snarl and white teeth pushed out, and fled past them
into the storm. And there they cruddled, in shelter at last: and such
was their weariness and the heaviness of the air, that they knew no more
until they awoke wondering.
For the sky was violet-blue above them, and the sun was going down among
torn flitters of cloud-wreck. All around, the mountains were hard-edged
and dark purple, with streaks and stripes and slashes of dim white from
the hail and sudden cold. The children crept out, shivering and tottering.
“Oh, Thorstein,” sobbed the lass, “I can go no farther: let us lie down
and die here.”
But he comforted her, and bade her lean on him, and led her up the moor,
slowly and painfully toiling, until step by step they gained a rocky pike
among white tables of stone and strange pillars and domes and curving
hollows, like the icebergs they tell of in the far northern seas. And
looking homeward in the twilight from that tower, they saw a deep dark
valley below, and weary fells on the other side, and dells and mountain
moors. But beyond, far beyond, a gleam of water and a rising shadow of
mountain beside it, that wiped off the stars from the southern sky. Aye,
and Thorstein greeted as he held the poor lass up to look at the strip of
light in the distance. “It is my mere, it is our own mere, Raineach. I
know it!”
How they came down Langdale side in the darkness they could never tell.
From ledge to ledge, among the hammers and knots of rock, clambering and
groping for foot-hold and hand-hold, sliding sometimes down the screes
and losing one another in the deep fern: but still descending, even when
they were swept down the mazes of the black gills and the torrent beds
roaring from the rain-storm: lightheaded with hunger, and reckless from
fatigue, they reached the valley.
Guided by a red spot of firelight they came upon the huts of the poor
folk who had harboured them on their outward journey: and there they
found food and a respite from their travelling; and made a ready tale
how the men had gone to the war and sent them home. For if they had let
it be known that Gartnaidh was dead, it was odds but the fell-folk would
have been rough and mishandled them. But for pity’s sake they were good,
and made them welcome, and wondered how they had come through the storm
unscathed. They housed them, and fed them, as long as they would bide,
and then set them a good step on their way, until they struck the path
over Hawkshead moor and down Rusland pool to the Leven.
As they came within sight of Leven firth and the well known hills, wooded
softly and winsome after the horrible ruggedness of the mountains,
Thorstein laughed and sang and shouted for joy, and stepped briskly
forward. “Come along, lass,” he cried, “come along with thee! Yonder is
Legbarrow, and the sands of Leven: a bit more and we shall see Greenodd.
Home, lass, home! Step out. Why, what ails thee, silly?”
“Oh, Thorstein, I dare not. My heart is like water within me, and my head
works sore.”
“Aye, poor thing, little tired thing. I’ll help thee along. See: yonder
is our howe: and the smoke from Greenodd. See the bonny fields and flocks
in them; and ah! they have built a new cottage by the ford, and sown a
bit of the intake on the fell. There’s Greenodd, Raineach: there it is;
our own house!”
“Nay, Thorstein, I can go no farther. My feet are broken, and my knees
are trembling. Oh let me be, and leave me.”
“Why, lass, it is but a step. Well, then: well, then: bide here if thou
must, and look for me back in a hop, skip and jump to lait thee.”
She saw him trip off with no more farewell; and then she dragged herself
up into a wild apple tree, and it began to grow dark: and she waited for
him, sick at heart. Then the night fell, and still she waited for him.