The House of the Wolfings Part 2

Of an alien folk thou comest, that we twain might be one indeed.

Thou shalt die one day. So hearken, to help me at my need."

His face grew troubled and he said: "What is this word that I am no chief of the Wolfings?"

"Nay," she said, "but better than they. Look thou on the face of our daughter the Hall-Sun, thy daughter and mine: favoureth she at all of me?"

He laughed: "Yea, whereas she is fair, but not otherwise. This is a hard saying, that I dwell among an alien kindred, and it wotteth not thereof.

Why hast thou not told me hereof before?"

She said: "It needed not to tell thee because thy day was waxing, as now it waneth. Once more I bid thee hearken and do my bidding though it be hard to thee."

He answered: "Even so will I as much as I may; and thus wise must thou look upon it, that I love life, and fear not death."

Then she spake, and again her words fell into rhyme:

"In forty fights hast thou foughten, and been worsted but in four; And I looked on and was merry; and ever more and more Wert thou dear to the heart of the Wood-Sun, and the Chooser of the Slain.

But now whereas ye are wending with slaughter-herd and wain To meet a folk that ye know not, a wonder, a peerless foe, I fear for thy glory's waning, and I see thee lying alow."

Then he brake in: "Herein is little shame to be worsted by the might of the mightiest: if this so mighty folk sheareth a limb off the tree of my fame, yet shall it wax again."

But she sang:

"In forty fights hast thou foughten, and beside thee who but I Beheld the wind-tossed banners, and saw the aspen fly?

But to-day to thy war I wend not, for Weird withholdeth me And sore my heart forebodeth for the battle that shall be.

To-day with thee I wend not; so I feared, and lo my feet, That are wont to the woodland girdle of the acres of the wheat, For thee among strange people and the foeman's throng have trod, And I tell thee their banner of battle is a wise and a mighty G.o.d.

For these are the folk of the cities, and in wondrous wise they dwell 'Mid confusion of heaped houses, dim and black as the face of h.e.l.l; Though therefrom rise roofs most goodly, where their captains and their kings Dwell amidst the walls of marble in abundance of fair things; And 'mid these, nor worser nor better, but builded otherwise Stand the Houses of the Fathers, and the hidden mysteries.

And as close as are the tree-trunks that within the beech-wood thrive E'en so many are their pillars; and therein like men alive Stand the images of G.o.d-folk in such raiment as they wore In the years before the cities and the hidden days of yore.

Ah for the gold that I gazed on! and their store of battle gear, And strange engines that I knew not, or the end for which they were.

Ah for the ordered wisdom of the war-array of these, And the folks that are sitting about them in dumb down-trodden peace!

So I thought now fareth war-ward my well-beloved friend, And the weird of the G.o.ds hath doomed it that no more with him may I wend!

Woe's me for the war of the Wolfings wherefrom I am sundered apart, And the fruitless death of the war-wise, and the doom of the hardy heart!"

Then he answered, and his eyes grew kind as he looked on her:

"For thy fair love I thank thee, and thy faithful word, O friend!

But how might it otherwise happen but we twain must meet in the end, The G.o.d of this mighty people and the Markmen and their kin?

Lo, this is the weird of the world, and what may we do herein?"

Then mirth came into her face again as she said:

"Who wotteth of Weird, and what she is till the weird is accomplished?

Long hath it been my weird to love thee and to fashion deeds for thee as I may; nor will I depart from it now." And she sang:

"Keen-edged is the sword of the city, and bitter is its spear, But thy breast in the battle, beloved, hath a wall of the st.i.thy's gear.

What now is thy wont in the handplay with the helm and the hauberk of rings?

Farest thou as the thrall and the cot-carle, or clad in the raiment of kings?"

He started, and his face reddened as he answered:

"O Wood-Sun thou wottest our battle and the way wherein we fare: That oft at the battle's beginning the helm and the hauberk we bear; Lest the shaft of the fleeing coward or the bow at adventure bent Should slay us ere the need be, ere our might be given and spent.

Yet oft ere the fight is over, and Doom hath scattered the foe, No leader of the people by his war-gear shall ye know, But by his hurts the rather, from the cot-carle and the thrall: For when all is done that a man may, 'tis the hour for a man to fall."

She yet smiled as she said in answer:

"O Folk-wolf, heed and hearken; for when shall thy life be spent And the Folk wherein thou dwellest with thy death be well content?

Whenso folk need the fire, do they hew the apple-tree, And burn the Mother of Blossom and the fruit that is to be?

Or me wilt thou bid to thy grave-mound because thy battle-wrath May nothing more be bridled than the whirl wind on his path?

So hearken and do my bidding, for the hauberk shalt thou bear E'en when the other warriors cast off their battle-gear.

So come thou, come unwounded from the war-field of the south, And sit with me in the beech-wood, and kiss me, eyes and mouth."

And she kissed him in very deed, and made much of him, and fawned on him, and laid her hand on his breast, and he was soft and blithe with her, but at last he laughed and said:

"G.o.d's Daughter, long hast thou lived, and many a matter seen, And men full often grieving for the deed that might have been; But here my heart thou wheedlest as a maid of tender years When first in the arms of her darling the horn of war she hears.

Thou knowest the axe to be heavy, and the sword, how keen it is; But that Doom of which thou hast spoken, wilt thou not tell of this, G.o.d's Daughter, how it sheareth, and how it breaketh through Each wall that the warrior buildeth, yea all deeds that he may do?

What might in the hammer's leavings, in the fire's thrall shall abide To turn that Folks' o'erwhelmer from the fated warrior's side?"

Then she laughed in her turn, and loudly; but so sweetly that the sound of her voice mingled with the first song of a newly awakened wood-thrush sitting on a rowan twig on the edge of the Wood-lawn. But she said:

"Yea, I that am G.o.d's Daughter may tell thee never a whit From what land cometh the hauberk nor what smith smithied it, That thou shalt wear in the handplay from the first stroke to the last; But this thereof I tell thee, that it holdeth firm and fast The life of the body it lappeth, if the gift of the G.o.dfolk it be.

Lo this is the yoke-mate of doom, and the gift of me unto thee."

Then she leaned down from the stone whereon they sat, and her hand was in the dewy gra.s.s for a little, and then it lifted up a dark grey rippling coat of rings; and she straightened herself in the seat again, and laid that hauberk on the knees of Thiodolf, and he put his hand to it, and turned it about, while he pondered long: then at last he said:

"What evil thing abideth with this warder of the strife, This burg and treasure chamber for the h.o.a.rding of my life?

For this is the work of the dwarfs, and no kindly kin of the earth; And all we fear the dwarf-kin and their anger and sorrow and mirth."

She cast her arms about him and fondled him, and her voice grew sweeter than the voice of any mortal thing as she answered:

"No ill for thee, beloved, or for me in the hauberk lies; No sundering grief is in it, no lonely miseries.

But we shall abide together, and that new life I gave, For a long while yet henceforward we twain its joy shall have.

Yea, if thou dost my bidding to wear my gift in the fight No hunter of the wild-wood at the changing of the night Shall see my shape on thy grave-mound or my tears in the morning find With the dew of the morning mingled; nor with the evening wind Shall my body pa.s.s the shepherd as he wandereth in the mead And fill him with forebodings on the eve of the Wolfings' need.

Nor the horse-herd wake in the midnight and hear my fateful cry; Nor yet shall the Wolfing women hear words on the wind go by As they weave and spin the night down when the House is gone to the war, And weep for the swains they wedded and the children that they bore.

Yea do my bidding, O Folk-wolf, lest a grief of the G.o.ds should weigh On the ancient House of the Wolfings and my death o'ercloud its day."

And still she clung about him, while he spake no word of yea or nay: but at the last he let himself glide wholly into her arms, and the dwarf-wrought hauberk fell from his knees and lay on the gra.s.s.

So they abode together in that wood-lawn till the twilight was long gone, and the sun arisen for some while. And when Thiodolf stepped out of the beech-wood into the broad sunshine dappled with the shadow of the leaves of the hazels moving gently in the fresh morning air, he was covered from the neck to the knee by a hauberk of rings dark and grey and gleaming, fashioned by the dwarfs of ancient days.

CHAPTER IV--THE HOUSE FARETH TO THE WAR

Now when Thiodolf came back to the habitations of the kindred the whole House was astir, both thrall-men and women, and free women hurrying from cot to st.i.thy, and from st.i.thy to hall bearing the last of the war-gear or raiment for the fighting-men. But they for their part were some standing about anigh the Man's-door, some sitting gravely within the hall, some watching the hurry of the thralls and women from the midmost of the open s.p.a.ce amidst of the habitations, whereon there stood yet certain wains which were belated: for the most of the wains were now standing with the oxen already yoked to them down in the meadow past the acres, encircled by a confused throng of kine and horses and thrall-folk, for thither had all the beasts for the slaughter, and the horses for the warriors been brought; and there were the horses tethered or held by the thralls; some indeed were already saddled and bridled, and on others were the thralls doing the harness.

But as for the wains of the Markmen, they were stoutly framed of ash-tree with panels of aspen, and they were broad-wheeled so that they might go over rough and smooth. They had high tilts over them well framed of willow-poles covered over with squares of black felt over-lapping like shingles; which felt they made of the rough of their fleeces, for they had many sheep. And these wains were to them for houses upon the way if need were, and therein as now were stored their meal and their war-store and after fight they would flit their wounded men in them, such as were too sorely hurt to back a horse: nor must it be hidden that whiles they looked to bring back with them the treasure of the south. Moreover the folk if they were worsted in any battle, instead of fleeing without more done, would often draw back fighting into a garth made by these wains, and guarded by some of their thralls; and there would abide the onset of those who had thrust them back in the field. And this garth they called the Wain-burg.

So now stood three of these wains aforesaid belated amidst of the habitations of the House, their yoke-beasts standing or lying down unharnessed as yet to them: but in the very midst of that place was a wain unlike to them; smaller than they but higher; square of shape as to the floor of it; built lighter than they, yet far stronger; as the warrior is stronger than the big carle and trencher-licker that loiters about the hall; and from the midst of this wain arose a mast made of a tall straight fir-tree, and thereon hung the banner of the Wolfings, wherein was wrought the image of the Wolf, but red of hue as a token of war, and with his mouth open and gaping upon the foemen. Also whereas the other wains were drawn by mere oxen, and those of divers colours, as chance would have it, the wain of the banner was drawn by ten black bulls of the mightiest of the herd, deep-dewlapped, high-crested and curly-browed; and their harness was decked with gold, and so was the wain itself, and the woodwork of it painted red with vermilion. There then stood the Banner of the House of the Wolfings awaiting the departure of the warriors to the hosting.