The Roots of the Mountains Read online

  CHAPTER XIX. THE FAIR WOMAN TELLETH FACE-OF-GOD OF HER KINDRED.

  WHEN he came back to the daïs he saw that there was meat upon the board,and the Friend said to him:

  ‘Now art thou Gold-mane indeed: but come now, sit by me and eat, thoughthe Wood-woman giveth thee but a sorry banquet, O guest; but from theDale it is, and we be too far now from the dwellings of men to havedelicate meat on the board, though to-night when they come back thy cheershall be better. Yet even then thou shalt have no such dainties asStone-face hath imagined for thee at the hands of the Wood-wight.’

  She laughed therewith, and he no less; and in sooth the meat was butsimple, of curds and new cheese, meat of the herdsmen. But Face-of-godsaid gaily: ‘Sweet it shall be to me; good is all that the Friendgiveth.’

  Then she raised her hand and made the sign of the Hammer over the board,and looked up at him and said:

  ‘Hath the Earth-god changed my face, Gold-mane, to what I verily am?’

  He held his face close to hers and looked into it, and him-seemed it wasas pure as the waters of a mountain lake, and as fine and well-wroughtevery deal of it as when his father had wrought in his stithy many daysand fashioned a small piece of great mastery. He was ashamed to kiss heragain, but he said to himself, ‘This is the fairest woman of the world,whom I have sworn to wed this year.’ Then he spake aloud and said:

  ‘I see the face of the Friend, and it will not change to me.’

  Again she reddened a little, and the happy look in her face seemed togrow yet sweeter, and he was bewildered with longing and delight.

  But she stood up and went to an ambrye in the wall and brought forth ahorn shod and lipped with silver of ancient fashion, and she poured wineinto it and held it forth and said:

  ‘O guest from the Dale, I pledge thee! and when thou hast drunk to me inturn we will talk of weighty matters. For indeed I bear hopes in myhands too heavy for the daughters of men to bear; and thou art achieftain’s son, and mayst well help me to bear them; so let us talksimply and without guile, as folk that trust one another.’

  So she drank and held out the horn to him, and he took the horn and herhand both, and he kissed her hand and said:

  ‘Here in this Hall I drink to the Sons of the Wolf, whosoever they be.’Therewith he drank and he said: ‘Simply and guilelessly indeed will Italk with thee; for I am weary of lies, and for thy sake have I told amany.’

  ‘Thou shalt tell no more,’ she said; ‘and as for the health thou hastdrunk, it is good, and shall profit thee. Now sit we here in theseancient seats and let us talk.’

  So they sat them down while the sun was westering in the March afternoon,and she said:

  ‘Tell me first what tidings have been in the Dale.’

  So he told her of the ransackings and of the murder at Carlstead.

  She said: ‘These tidings have we heard before, and some deal of them weknow better than ye do, or can; for we were the ransackers of Penny-thumband Harts-bane. Thereof will I say more presently. What other tidingshast thou to tell of? What oaths were sworn upon the Boar last Yule?’

  So he told her of the oath of Bristler the son of Brightling. She smiledand said: ‘He shall keep his oath, and yet redden no blade.’

  Then he told of his father’s oath, and she said:

  ‘It is good; but even so would he do and no oath sworn. All men maytrust Iron-face. And thou, my friend, what oath didst thou swear?’

  His face grew somewhat troubled as he said: ‘I swore to wed the fairestwoman in the world, though the Dalesmen gainsaid me, and they beyond theDale.’

  ‘Yea,’ she said, ‘and there is no need to ask thee whom thou didst meanby thy “fairest woman,” for I have seen that thou deemest me fair enough.My friend, maybe thy kindred will be against it, and the kindred of theBride; and it might be that my kindred would have gainsaid it if thingswere not as they are. But though all men gainsay it, yet will not I. Itis meet and right that we twain wed.’

  She spake very soberly and quietly, but when she had spoken there wasnothing in his heart but joy and gladness: yet shame of her lovelinessrefrained him, and he cast down his eyes before hers. Then she said in akind voice:

  ‘I know thee, how glad thou art of this word of mine, because thoulookest on me with eyes of love, and thinkest of me as better than I am;though I am no ill woman and no beguiler. But this is not all that Ihave to say to thee, though it be much; for there are more folk in theworld than thou and I only. But I told thee this first, that thoumightest trust me in all things. So, my friend, if thou canst, refrainthy joy and thy longing a little, and hearken to what concerneth thee andme, and thy people and mine.’

  ‘Fair woman and sweet friend,’ he said, ‘thou knowest of a gladness whichis hard to bear if one must lay it aside for a while; and of a longingwhich is hard to refrain if it mingle with another longing—knowest thounot?’

  ‘Yea,’ she said, ‘I know it.’

  ‘Yet,’ said Face-of-god, ‘I will forbear as thou biddest me. Tell me,then, what were the felons who were slain at Carlstead? Knowest thou ofthem?’

  ‘Over well,’ she said, ‘they are our foes this many a year; and since wemet last autumn they have become foes of you Dalesmen also. Soon shallye have tidings of them; and it was against them that I bade thee armyesterday.’

  Said Face-of-god: ‘Is it against them that thou wouldst have us do battlealong with thy folk?’

  ‘So it is,’ she said; ‘no other foemen have we. And now, Gold-mane, thouart become a friend of the Wolf, and shalt before long be of affinitywith our House; that other day thou didst ask me to tell thee of me andmine, and now will I do according to thine asking. Short shall my talebe; because maybe thou shalt hear it told again, and in goodly wise,before thine whole folk.

  ‘As thou wottest we be now outlaws and Wolves’ Heads; and whiles we liftthe gear of men, but ever if we may of ill men and not of good; there isno worthy goodman of the Dale from whom we would take one hoof, or a skinof wine, or a cake of wax.

  ‘Wherefore are we outlaws? Because we have been driven from our own, andwe bore away our lives and our weapons, and little else; and for ourlands, thou seest this Vale in the howling wilderness and how narrow andpoor it is, though it hath been the nurse of warriors in time past.

  ‘Hearken! Time long ago came the kindred of the Wolf to these Mountainsof the World; and they were in a pass in the stony maze and the utterwilderness of the Mountains, and the foe was behind them in numbers notto be borne up against. And so it befell that the pass forked, and therewere two ways before our Folk; and one part of them would take the way tothe north and the other the way to the south; and they could not agreewhich way the whole Folk should take. So they sundered into twocompanies, and one took one way and one another. Now as to those whofared by the southern road, we knew not what befell them, nor for longand long had we any tale of them.

  ‘But we who took the northern road, we happened on this Vale amidst thewilderness, and we were weary of fleeing from the over-mastering foe; andthe dale seemed enough, and a refuge, and a place to dwell in, and no manwas there before us, and few were like to find it, and we were but a few.So we dwelt here in this Vale for as wild as it is, the place where thesun shineth never in the winter, and scant is the summer sunshinetherein. Here we raised a Doom-ring and builded us a Hall, wherein thounow sittest beside me, O friend, and we dwelt here many seasons.

  ‘We had a few sheep in the wilderness, and a few neat fed down the grassof the Vale; and we found gems and copper in the rocks about us wherewithat whiles to chaffer with the aliens, and fish we drew from our river theShivering Flood. Also it is not to be hidden that in those days we didnot spare to lift the goods of men; yea, whiles would our warriors faredown unto the edges of the Plain and lie in wait there till the timeserved, and then drive the spoil from under the very walls of the Cities.Our men were not little-hearted, nor did our women lament the death ofwarriors over-much, for they were there to bear more warriors to
theFolk.

  ‘But the seasons passed, and the Folk multiplied in Shadowy Vale, andlivelihood seemed like to fail them, and needs must they seek widerlands. So by ways which thou wilt one day wot of, we came into a valleythat lieth north-west of Shadowy Vale: a land like thine of Burgdale, orbetter; wide it was, plenteous of grass and trees, well watered, full ofall things that man can desire.

  ‘Were there men before us in this Dale? sayest thou. Yea, but not verymany, and they feeble in battle, weak of heart, though strong of body.These, when they saw the Sons of the Wolf with weapons in their hands,felt themselves puny before us, and their hearts failed them; and theycame to us with gifts, and offered to share the Dale between them and us,for they said there was enough for both folks. So we took their offerand became their friends; and some of our Houses wedded wives of thestrangers, and gave them their women to wife. Therein they did amiss;for the blended Folk as the generations passed became softer than ourblood, and many were untrusty and greedy and tyrannous, and the days ofthe whoredom fell upon us, and when we deemed ourselves the mightiestthen were we the nearest to our fall. But the House whereof I am wouldnever wed with these Westlanders, and other Houses there were who hadaffinity with us who chiefly wedded with us of the Wolf, and theirfathers had come with ours into that fruitful Dale; and these were calledthe Red Hand, and the Silver Arm, and the Golden Bushel, and the RaggedSword. Thou hast heard those names once before, friend?’

  ‘Yea,’ he said, and as he spoke the picture of that other day came backto him, and he called to mind all that he had said, and his happiness ofthat hour seemed the more and the sweeter for that memory.

  She went on: ‘Fair and goodly is that Dale as mine own eyes have seen,and plentiful of all things, and up in its mountains to the east arecaves and pits whence silver is digged abundantly; therefore is the Dalecalled Silver-dale. Hast thou heard thereof, my friend?’

  ‘Nay,’ said Face-of-god, ‘though I have marvelled whence ye gat suchfoison of silver.’

  He looked on her and marvelled, for now she seemed as if it were anotherwoman: her eyes were gleaming bright, her lips were parted; there was abright red flush on the pommels of her two cheeks as she spake again andsaid:

  ‘Happy lived the Folk in Silver-dale for many and many winters andsummers: the seasons were good and no lack was there: little sicknessthere was and less war, and all seemed better than well. It is strangethat ye Dalesmen have not heard of Silver-dale.’

  ‘Nay,’ said he, ‘but I have not; of Rose-dale have I heard, as a landvery far away: but no further do we know of toward that aírt. LiethSilver-dale anywhere nigh to Rose-dale?’

  She said: ‘It is the next dale to it, yet is it a far journey betwixt thetwo, for the ice-sea pusheth a horn in betwixt them; and even below theice the mountain-neck is passable to none save a bold crag-climber, andto him only bearing his life in his hands. But, my friend, I am butlingering over my tale, because it grieveth me sore to have to tell it.Hearken then! In the days when I had seen but ten summers, and mybrother was a very young man, but exceeding strong, and as beautiful asthou art now, war fell on us without rumour or warning; for there swarmedinto Silver-dale, though not by the ways whereby we had entered it, ahost of aliens, short of stature, crooked of limb, foul of aspect, butfierce warriors and armed full well: they were men having no country togo back to, though they had no women or children with them, as we hadwhen we were young in these lands, but used all women whom they took astheir beastly lust bade them, making them their thralls if they slew themnot. Soon we found that these foemen asked no more of us than all wehad, and therewithal our lives to be cast away or used for their serviceas beasts of burden or pleasure. There then we gathered our fighting-menand withstood them; and if we had been all of the kindreds of the Wolfand the fruit of the wives of warriors, we should have driven back thesefelons and saved the Dale, though it maybe more than half ruined: but themost part of us were of that mingled blood, or of the generations of theDalesmen whom we had conquered long ago, and stout as they were of bodytheir hearts failed them, and they gave themselves up to the aliens to beas their oxen and asses.

  ‘Why make a long tale of it? We who were left, and could brook death butnot thraldom, fought it out together, women as well as men, till thesweetness of life and a happy chance for escape bid us flee, vanquishedbut free men. For at the end of three days’ fight we had been driven upto the easternmost end of the Dale, and up anigh to the jaws of the passwhereby the Folk had first come into Silver-dale, and we had those withus who knew every cranny of that way, while to strangers who knew it notit was utterly impassable; night was coming on also, and even thosemurder-carles were weary with slaying; and, moreover, on this last day,when they saw that they had won all, they were fighting to keep, and notto slay, and a few stubborn carles and queens, of what use would they be,or where was the gain of risking life to win them?

  ‘So they forbore us, and night came on moonless and dark; and it was theearly spring season, when the days are not yet long, and so by night andcloud we fled away, and back again to Shadowy Vale.

  ‘Forsooth, we were but a few; for when we were gotten into this Vale,this strip of grass and water in the wilderness, and had told up ourcompany, we were but two hundred and thirty and five of men and women andchildren. For there were an hundred and thirty and three grown men ofall ages, and of women grown seventy and five, and one score and sevenchildren, whereof I was one; for, as thou mayst deem, it was easier forgrown men with weapons in their hands to escape from that slaughter thanfor women and children.

  ‘There sat we in yonder Doom-ring and took counsel, and to some it seemedgood that we should all dwell together in Shadowy Vale, and beset theskirts of the foemen till the days should better; but others deemed thatthere was little avail therein; and there was a mighty man of thekindred, Stone-wolf by name, a man of middle-age, and he said, that latein life had he tasted of war, and though the banquet was made bitter withdefeat, yet did the meat seem wholesome to him. “Come down with me tothe Cities of the Plain,” said he, “all you who are stout warriors; andleave we here the old men and the swains and the women and children.Hateful are the folk there, and full of malice, but soft withal anddastardly. Let us go down thither and make ourselves strong amongstthem, and sell our valour for their wealth till we come to rule them, andthey make us their kings, and we establish the Folk of the Wolf amongstthe aliens; then will we come back hither and bring away that which wehave left.”

  ‘So he spake, and the more part of the warriors yea said his rede, andthey went with him to the Westland, and amongst these was my brotherFolk-might (for that is his name in the kindred). And I sorrowed at hisdeparture, for he had borne me thither out of the flames and the clash ofswords and the press of battle, and to me had he ever been kind andloving, albeit he hath had the Words of hard and froward used on him fulloft.

  ‘So in this Vale abode we that were left, and the seasons passed; some ofthe elders died, and some of the children also; but more children wereborn, for amongst us were men and women to whom it was lawful to wed witheach other. Even with this scanty remnant was left some of the life ofthe kindred of old days; and after we had been here but a little while,the young men, yea and the old also, and even some of the women, wouldsteal through passes that we, and we only, knew of, and would fall uponthe Aliens in Silver-dale as occasion served, and lift their goods bothlive and dead; and this became both a craft and a pastime amongst us.Nor may I hide that we sometimes went lifting otherwhere; for in thesummer and autumn we would fare west a little and abide in the woods theseason through, and hunt the deer thereof, and whiles would we drive thespoil from the scattered folk not far from your Shepherd-Folk; but withthe Shepherds themselves and with you Dalesmen we meddled not.

  ‘Now that little wood-lawn with the toft of an ancient dwelling in it,wherein, saith Bow-may, thou didst once rest, was one of our summerabodes; and later on we built the hall under the pine-wood that thouknowest.

  ‘Thus t
hen grew up our young men; and our maids were little softer; e’ensuch as Bow-may is (and kind is she withal), and it seemed in very soothas if the Spirit of the Wolf was with us, and the roughness of the Wastemade us fierce; and law we had not and heeded not, though love wasamongst us.’

  She stopped awhile and fell a-musing, and her face softened, and sheturned to him with that sweet happy look upon it and said:

  ‘Desolate and dreary is the Dale, thou deemest, friend; and yet for me Ilove it and its dark-green water, and it is to me as if the Fathers ofthe kindred visit it and hold converse with us; and there I grew up whenI was little, before I knew what a woman was, and strange communings hadI with the wilderness. Friend, when we are wedded, and thou art a greatchieftain, as thou wilt be, I shall ask of thee the boon to suffer me toabide here at whiles that I may remember the days when I was little andthe love of the kindred waxed in me.’

  ‘This is but a little thing to ask,’ said Face-of-god; ‘I would thouhadst asked me more.’

  ‘Fear not,’ she said, ‘I shall ask thee for much and many things; andsome of them belike thou shalt deny me.’

  He shook his head; but she smiled in his face and said:

  ‘Yea, so it is, friend; but hearken. The seasons passed, and six yearswore, and I was grown a tall slim maiden, fleet of foot and able toendure toil enough, though I never bore weapons, nor have done. So on afair even of midsummer when we were together, the most of us, round aboutthis Hall and the Doom-ring, we saw a tall man in bright war-gear comeforth into the Dale by the path that thou camest, and then another andanother till there were two score and seven men-at-arms standing on thegrass below the scree yonder; by that time had we gotten some weapons inour hands, and we stood together to meet the new-comers, but they drew nosword and notched no shaft, but came towards us laughing and joyous, andlo! it was my brother Folk-might and his men, those that were left ofthem, come back to us from the Westland.

  ‘Glad indeed was I to behold him; and for him when he had taken me in hisarms and looked up and down the Dale, he cried out: ‘In many fair placesand many rich dwellings have I been; but this is the hour that I havelooked for.’

  ‘Now when we asked him concerning Stone-wolf and the others who weremissing (for ten tens of stalwarth men had fared to the Westland), heswept out his hand toward the west and said with a solemn face: “Therethey lie, and grass groweth over their bones, and we who have come aback,and ye who have abided, these are now the children of the Wolf: there areno more now on the earth.”

  ‘Let be! It was a fair even and high was the feast in the Hall thatnight, and sweet was the converse with our folk come back. A glad manwas my brother Folk-might when he heard that for years past we had beenlifting the gear of men, and chiefly of the Aliens in Silver-dale: and hehimself was become learned in war and a deft leader of men.

  ‘So the days passed and the seasons, and we lived on as we might; butwith Folk-might’s return there began to grow up in all our hearts whathad long been flourishing in mine, and that was the hope of one daywinning back our own again, and dying amidst the dear groves ofSilver-dale. Within these years we had increased somewhat in number; forif we had lost those warriors in the Westland, and some old men who haddied in the Dale, yet our children had grown up (I have now seen twentyand one summers) and more were growing up. Moreover, after the firstyear, from the time when we began to fall upon the Dusky Men ofSilver-dale, from time to time they who went on such adventures set freesuch thralls of our blood as they could fall in with and whom they couldtrust in, and they dwelt (and yet dwell) with us in the Dale: first andlast we have taken in three score and twelve of such men, and a score ofwomen-thralls withal.

  ‘Now during these seasons, and not very long ago, after I was a womangrown, the thought came to me, and to Folk-might also, that there werekindreds of the people dwelling anear us whom we might so deal with thatthey should become our friends and brothers in arms, and that throughthem we might win back Silver-dale.

  ‘Of Rose-dale we wotted already that the Folk were nought of our blood,feeble in the field, cowed by the Dusky Men, and at last made thralls tothem; so nought was to do there. But Folk-might went to and fro togather tidings: at whiles I with him, at whiles one or more ofWood-father’s children, who with their father and mother and Bow-may haveabided in the Vale ever since the Great Undoing.

  ‘Soon he fell in with thy Folk, and first of all with the Woodlanders,and that was a joy to him; for wot ye what? He got to know that thesemen were the children of those of our Folk who had sundered from us inthe mountain passes time long and long ago; and he loved them, for he sawthat they were hardy and trusty, and warriors at heart.

  ‘Then he went amongst the Shepherd-Folk, and he deemed them good meneasily stirred, and deemed that they might soon be won to friendship; andhe knew that they were mostly come from the Houses of the Woodlanders, sothat they also were of the kindred.

  ‘And last he came into Burgdale, and found there a merry and happy Folk,little wont to war, but stout-hearted, and nowise puny either of body orsoul; he went there often and learned much about them, and deemed thatthey would not be hard to win to fellowship. And he found that the Houseof the Face was the chiefest house there; and that the Alderman and hissons were well beloved of all the folk, and that they were the men to bewon first, since through them should all others be won. I also went toBurgstead with him twice, as I told thee erst; and I saw thee, and Ideemed that thou wouldest lightly become our friend; and it came into mymind that I myself might wed thee, and that the House of the Face therebymight have affinity thenceforth with the Children of the Wolf.’

  He said: ‘Why didst thou deem thus of me, O friend?’

  She laughed and said: ‘Dost thou long to hear me say the words when thouknowest my thought well? So be it. I saw thee both young and fair; andI knew thee to be the son of a noble, worthy, guileless man and of abeauteous woman of great wits and good rede. And I found thee to be kindand open-handed and simple like thy father, and like thy mother wiserthan thou thyself knew of thyself; and that thou wert desirous of deedsand fain of women.’

  She was silent for a while, and he also: then he said: ‘Didst thou drawme to the woods and to thee?’

  She reddened and said: ‘I am no spell-wife: but true it is thatWood-mother made a waxen image of thee, and thrust through the heartthereof the pin of my girdle-buckle, and stroked it every morning with anoak-bough over which she had sung spells. But dost thou not remember,Gold-mane, how that one day last Hay-month, as ye were resting in themeadows in the cool of the evening, there came to you a minstrel thatplayed to you on the fiddle, and therewith sang a song that melted allyour hearts, and that this song told of the Wild-wood, and what wastherein of desire and peril and beguiling and death, and love unto Deathitself? Dost thou remember, friend?’

  ‘Yea,’ he said, ‘and how when the minstrel was done Stone-face fell totelling us more tales yet of the woodland, and the minstrel sang againand yet again, till his tales had entered into my very heart.’

  ‘Yea,’ she said, ‘and that minstrel was Wood-wont; and I sent him to singto thee and thine, deeming that if thou didst hearken, thou would’st seekthe woodland and happen upon us.’

  He laughed and said: ‘Thou didst not doubt but that if we met, thoumightest do with me as thou wouldest?’

  ‘So it is,’ she said, ‘that I doubted it little.’

  ‘Therein wert thou wise,’ said Face-of-god; ‘but now that we are talkingwithout guile to each other, mightest thou tell me wherefore it was thatFolk-might made that onslaught upon me? For certain it is that he wasminded to slay me.’

  She said: ‘It was sooth what I told thee, that whiles he groweth sobattle-eager that whatso edge-tool he beareth must needs come out of thescabbard; but there was more in it than that, which I could not tell theeerst. Two days before thy coming he had been down to Burgstead in theguise of an old carle such as thou sawest him with me in themarket-place. There was he guested in your Hall, and on
ce more saw theeand the Bride together; and he saw the eyes of love wherewith she lookedon thee (for so much he told me), and deemed that thou didst take herlove but lightly. And he himself looked on her with such love (and thishe told me not) that he deemed nought good enough for her, and would havehad thee give thyself up wholly to her; for my brother is a generous man,my friend. So when I told him on the morn of that day whereon we metthat we looked to see thee that eve (for indeed I am somewhatforeseeing), he said: “Look thou, Sun-beam, if he cometh, it is notunlike that I shall drive a spear through him.” “Wherefore?” said I;“can he serve our turn when he is dead?” Said he: “I care little. Mineown turn will I serve. Thou sayest _Wherefore_? I tell thee thisstripling beguileth to her torment the fairest woman that is in theworld—such an one as is meet to be the mother of chieftains, and to standby warriors in their day of peril. I have seen her; and thus have I seenher.” Then said I: “Greatly forsooth shalt thou pleasure her by slayinghim!” And he answered: “I shall pleasure myself. And one day she shallthank me, when she taketh my hand in hers and we go together to theBride-bed.” Therewith came over me a clear foresight of the hours tocome, and I said to him: “Yea, Folk-might, cast the spear and draw thesword; but him thou shalt not slay: and thou shalt one day see himstanding with us before the shafts of the Dusky Men.” So I spake; but helooked fiercely at me, and departed and shunned me all that day, and bygood hap I was hard at hand when thou drewest nigh our abode. Nay,Gold-mane, what would’st thou with thy sword? Why art thou so red andwrathful? Would’st thou fight with my brother because he loveth thyfriend, thine old playmate, thy kinswoman, and thinketh pity of hersorrow?’

  He said, with knit brow and gleaming eyes: ‘Would the man take her awayfrom me perforce?’

  ‘My friend,’ she said, ‘thou art not yet so wise as not to be a fool atwhiles. Is it not so that she herself hath taken herself from thee,since she hath come to know that thou hast given thyself to another?Hath she noted nought of thee this winter and spring? Is she wellpleased with the ways of thee?’

  He said: ‘Thou hast spoken simply with me, and I will do no less withthee. It was but four days agone that she did me to wit that she knew ofme how I sought my love on the Mountain; and she put me to sore shame,and afterwards I wept for her sorrow.’

  Therewith he told her all that the Bride had said to him, as he wellmight, for he had forgotten no word of it.

  Then said the Friend: ‘She shall have the token that she craveth, and itis I that shall give it to her.’

  Therewith she took from her finger a ring wherein was set a very fairchangeful mountain-stone, and gave it to him, and said:

  ‘Thou shalt give her this and tell her whence thou hadst it; and tell herthat I bid her remember that To-morrow is a new day.’