The Roots of the Mountains Page 13

  CHAPTER XII. STONE-FACE TELLETH CONCERNING THE WOOD-WIGHTS.

  EARLY on the morrow Gold-mane arose and clad himself and went out-a-doorsand over the trodden snow on to the bridge over the Weltering Water, andthere betook himself into one of the coins of safety built over theup-stream piles; there he leaned against the wall and turned his face tothe Thorp, and fell to pondering on his case. And first he thought abouthis oath, and how that he had sworn to wed the Mountain Woman, althoughhis kindred and her kindred should gainsay him, yea and herself also.Great seemed that oath to him, yet at that moment he wished he had madeit greater, and made all the kindred, yea and the Bride herself, sure ofthe meaning of the words of it: and he deemed himself a dastard that hehad not done so. Then he looked round him and beheld the winter, and hefell into mere longing that the spring were come and the token from theMountain. Things seemed too hard for him to deal with, and he between amighty folk and two wayward women; and he went nigh to wish that he hadtaken his father’s offer and gone down to the Cities; and even had he methis bane: well were that! And, as young folk will, he set to work makinga picture of his deeds there, had he been there. He showed himself thestricken fight in the plain, and the press, and the struggle, and thebreaking of the serried band, and himself amidst the ring of foemen doingmost valiantly, and falling there at last, his shield o’er-heavy with theweight of foemen’s spears for a man to uphold it. Then the victory ofhis folk and the lamentation and praise over the slain man of theMountain Dales, and the burial of the valiant warrior, the praisingweeping folk meeting him at the City-gate, laid stark and cold in hisarms on the gold-hung garlanded bier.

  There ended his dream, and he laughed aloud and said: ‘I am a fool! Allthis were good and sweet if I should see it myself; and forsooth that ishow I am thinking of it, as if I still alive should see myself dead andfamous!’

  Then he turned a little and looked at the houses of the Thorp lying darkabout the snowy ways under the starlit heavens of the winter morning:dark they were indeed and grey, save where here and there the half-burnedYule-fire reddened the windows of a hall, or where, as in one place, thecandle of some early waker shone white in a chamber window. There wasscarce a man astir, he deemed, and no sound reached him save the crowingof the cocks muffled by their houses, and a faint sound of beasts in thebyres.

  Thus he stood a while, his thoughts wandering now, till presently heheard footsteps coming his way down the street and turned toward them,and lo it was the old man Stone-face. He had seen Gold-mane go out, andhad risen and followed him that he might talk with him apart. Gold-manegreeted him kindly, though, sooth to say, he was but half content to seehim; since he doubted, what was verily the case, that his foster-fatherwould give him many words, counselling him to refrain from going to thewood, and this was loathsome to him; but he spake and said:

  ‘Meseems, father, that the eastern sky is brightening toward dawn.’

  ‘Yea,’ quoth Stone-face.

  ‘It will be light in an hour,’ said Face-of-god.

  ‘Even so,’ said Stone-face.

  ‘And a fair day for the morrow of Yule,’ said the swain.

  ‘Yea,’ said Stone-face, ‘and what wilt thou do with the fair day? Wiltthou to the wood?’

  ‘Maybe, father,’ said Gold-mane; ‘Hall-face and some of the swains aretalking of elks up the fells which may be trapped in the drifts, and ifthey go a-hunting them, I may go in their company.’

  ‘Ah, son,’ quoth Stone-face, ‘thou wilt look to see other kind of beaststhan elks. Things may ye fall in with there who may not be impounded inthe snow like to elks, but can go light-foot on the top of the soft driftfrom one place to another.’

  Said Gold-mane: ‘Father, fear me not; I shall either refrain me from thewood, or if I go, I shall go to hunt the wood-deer with other hunters.But since thou hast come to me, tell me more about the wood, for thytales thereof are fair.’

  ‘Yea,’ said Stone-face, ‘fair tales of foul things, as oft it befallethin the world. Hearken now! if thou deemest that what thou seekest shallcome readier to thine hand because of the winter and the snow, thouerrest. For the wights that waylay the bodies and souls of the mighty inthe wild-wood heed such matters nothing; yea and at Yule-tide are theymost abroad, and most armed for the fray. Even such an one have I seentime agone, when the snow was deep and the wind was rough; and it was inthe likeness of a woman clad in such raiment as the Bride bore lastnight, and she trod the snow light-foot in thin raiment where it wouldscarce bear the skids of a deft snow-runner. Even so she stood beforeme; the icy wind blew her raiment round about her, and drifted the hairfrom her garlanded head toward me, and she as fair and fresh as in themidsummer days. Up the fell she fared, sweetest of all things to lookon, and beckoned on me to follow; on me, the Warrior, the Stout-heart;and I followed, and between us grief was born; but I it was that fosteredthat child and not she. Always when she would be, was she merry andlovely; and even so is she now, for she is of those that be long-lived.And I wot that thou hast seen even such an one!’

  ‘Tell me more of thy tales, foster-father,’ said Gold-mane, ‘and fear notfor me!’

  ‘Ah, son,’ he said, ‘mayst thou have no such tales to tell to those thatshall be young when thou art old. Yet hearken! We sat in the halltogether and there was no third; and methought that the birds sang andthe flowers bloomed, and sweet was their savour, though it was midwinter.A rose-wreath was on her head; grapes were on the board, and fairunwrinkled summer apples on the day that we feasted together. When wasthe feast? sayst thou. Long ago. What was the hall, thou sayest,wherein ye feasted? I know not if it were on the earth or under it, orif we rode the clouds that even. But on the morrow what was there butthe stark wood and the drift of the snow, and the iron wind howlingthrough the branches, and a lonely man, a wanderer rising from theground. A wanderer through the wood and up the fell, and up the highmountain, and up and up to the edges of the ice-river and the green cavesof the ice-hills. A wanderer in spring, in summer, autumn and winter,with an empty heart and a burning never-satisfied desire; who hath seenin the uncouth places many an evil unmanly shape, many a foul hag andchanging ugly semblance; who hath suffered hunger and thirst and woundingand fever, and hath seen many things, but hath never again seen that fairwoman, or that lovely feast-hall.

  ‘All praise and honour to the House of the Face, and the bounteousvaliant men thereof! and the like praise and honour to the fair womenwhom they wed of the valiant and goodly House of the Steer!’

  ‘Even so say I,’ quoth Gold-mane calmly; ‘but now wend we aback to theHouse, for it is morning indeed, and folk will be stirring there.’

  So they turned from the bridge together; and Stone-face was kind andfatherly, and was telling his foster-son many wise things concerning thelife of a chieftain, and the giving-out of dooms and the gathering forbattle; to all which talk Face-of-god seemed to hearken gladly, butindeed hearkened not at all; for verily his eyes were beholding thatsnowy waste, and the fair woman upon it; even such an one as Stone-facehad told of.