House of the Wolfings: The William Morris Book that Inspired J. R. R. Tolkiena *s The Lord of the Rings (26 page)

But as for him, when he fell, all memory of
the battle and what had gone before it faded from his mind, and he
passed into sweet and pleasant dreams wherein he was a lad again in
the days before he had fought with the three Hun-Kings in the
hazelled field. And in these dreams he was doing after the manner
of young lads, sporting in the meadows, backing unbroken colts,
swimming in the river, going a-hunting with the elder carles. And
especially he deemed that he was in the company of one old man who
had taught him both wood-craft and the handling of weapons: and
fair at first was his dream of his doings with this man; he was
with him in the forge smithying a sword-blade, and hammering into
its steel the thin golden wires; and fishing with an angle along
with him by the eddies of Mirkwood-water; and sitting with him in
an ingle of the Hall, the old man telling a tale of an ancient
warrior of the Wolfings hight Thiodolf also: then suddenly and
without going there, they were in a little clearing of the woods
resting after hunting, a roe-deer with an arrow in her lying at
their feet, and the old man was talking, and telling Thiodolf in
what wise it was best to go about to get the wind of a hart; but
all the while there was going on the thunder of a great gale of
wind through the woodland boughs, even as the drone of a bag-pipe
cleaves to the tune. Presently Thiodolf arose and would go about
his hunting again, and stooped to take up his spear, and even
therewith the old man’s speech stayed, and Thiodolf looked up, and
lo, his face was white like stone, and he touched him, and he was
hard as flint, and like the image of an ancient god as to his face
and hands, though the wind stirred his hair and his raiment, as
they did before. Therewith a great pang smote Thiodolf in his
dream, and he felt as if he also were stiffening into stone, and he
strove and struggled, and lo, the wild-wood was gone, and a white
light empty of all vision was before him, and as he moved his head
this became the Wolfing meadow, as he had known it so long, and
thereat a soft pleasure and joy took hold of him, till again he
looked, and saw there no longer the kine and sheep, and the
herd-women tending them, but the rush and turmoil of that fierce
battle, the confused thundering noise of which was going up to the
heavens; for indeed he was now fully awake again.

So he stood up and looked about; and around
him was a ring of the sorrowful faces of the warriors, who had
deemed that he was hurt deadly, though no hurt could they find upon
him. But the Dwarf-wrought Hauberk lay upon the ground beside him;
for they had taken it off him to look for his hurts.

So he looked into their faces and said:
“What aileth you, ye men? I am alive and unhurt; what hath
betided?”

And one said: “Art thou verily alive, or a
man come back from the dead? We saw thee fall as thou wentest
leading us against the foe as if thou hadst been smitten by a
thunder-bolt, and we deemed thee dead or grievously hurt. Now the
carles are fighting stoutly, and all is well since thou livest
yet.”

So he said: “Give me the point and edges
that I know, that I may smite myself therewith and not the foemen;
for I have feared and blenched from the battle.”

Said an old warrior: “If that be so,
Thiodolf, wilt thou blench twice? Is not once enough? Now let us go
back to the hard handplay, and if thou wilt, smite thyself after
the battle, when we have once more had a man’s help of thee.”

Therewith he held out Throng-plough to him
by the point, and Thiodolf took hold of the hilts and handled it
and said: “Let us hasten, while the Gods will have it so, and while
they are still suffering me to strike a stroke for the
kindred.”

And therewith he brandished Throng-plough,
and went forth toward the battle, and the heart grew hot within
him, and the joy of waking life came back to him, the joy which but
erewhile he had given to a mere dream.

But the old man who had rebuked him stooped
down and lifted the Hauberk from the ground, and cried out after
him, “O Thiodolf, and wilt thou go naked into so strong a fight?
and thou with this so goodly sword-rampart?”

Thiodolf stayed a moment, and even therewith
they looked, and lo! the Romans giving back before the Goths and
the Goths following up the chase, but slowly and steadily. Then
Thiodolf heeded nothing save the battle, but ran forward hastily,
and those warriors followed him, the old man last of all holding
the Hauberk in his hand, and muttering:

So fares hot blood to the glooming and the
world beneath the grass;

And the fruit of the Wolfings’ orchard in a
flash from the world must pass.

Men say that the tree shall blossom in the
garden of the folk,

And the new twig thrust him forward from the
place where the old one broke,

And all be well as aforetime: but old and
old I grow,

And I doubt me if such another the folk to
come shall know.

And he still hurried forward as fast as his
old body might go, so that he might wrap the safeguard of the
Hauberk round Thiodolf’s body.

Chapter 24

The Goths Are Overthrown by the Romans

Now rose up a mighty shout when Thiodolf
came back to the battle of the kindreds, for many thought he had
been slain; and they gathered round about him, and cried out to him
joyously out of their hearts of good-fellowship, and the old man
who had rebuked Thiodolf, and who was Jorund of the Wolfings, came
up to him and reached out to him the Hauberk, and he did it on
scarce heeding; for all his heart and soul was turned toward the
battle of the Romans and what they were a-doing; and he saw that
they were falling back in good order, as men out-numbered, but
undismayed. So he gathered all his men together and ordered them
afresh; for they were somewhat disarrayed with the fray and the
chase: and now he no longer ordered them in the wedge array, but in
a line here three deep, here five deep, or more, for the foes were
hard at hand, and outnumbered, and so far overcome, that he and all
men deemed it a little matter to give these their last overthrow,
and then onward to Wolf-stead to storm on what was left there and
purge the house of the foemen. Howbeit Thiodolf bethought him that
succour might come to the Romans from their main-battle, as they
needed not many men there, since there was nought to fear behind
them: but the thought was dim within him, for once more since he
had gotten the Hauberk on him the earth was wavering and
dream-like: he looked about him, and nowise was he as in past days
of battle when he saw nought but the foe before him, and hoped for
nothing save the victory. But now indeed the Wood-Sun seemed to him
to be beside him, and not against his will, as one besetting and
hindering him, but as though his own longing had drawn her thither
and would not let her depart; and whiles it seemed to him that her
beauty was clearer to be seen than the bodies of the warriors round
about him. For the rest he seemed to be in a dream indeed, and, as
men do in dreams, to be for ever striving to be doing something of
more moment than anything which he did, but which he must ever
leave undone. And as the dream gathered and thickened about him the
foe before him changed to his eyes, and seemed no longer the stern
brown-skinned smooth-faced men under their crested iron helms with
their iron-covered shields before them, but rather, big-headed men,
small of stature, long-bearded, swart, crooked of body, exceeding
foul of aspect. And he looked on and did nothing for a while, and
his head whirled as though he had been grievously smitten.

Thus tarried the kindreds awhile, and they
were bewildered and their hearts fell because Thiodolf did not fly
on the foemen like a falcon on the quarry, as his wont was. But as
for the Romans, they had now stayed, and were facing their foes
again, and that on a vantage-ground, since the field sloped up
toward the Wolfing dwelling; and they gathered heart when they saw
that the Goths tarried and forbore them. But the sun was sinking,
and the evening was hard at hand.

So at last Thiodolf led forward with
Throng-plough held aloft in his right hand; but his left hand he
held out by his side, as though he were leading someone along. And
as he went, he muttered: “When will these accursed sons of the
nether earth leave the way clear to us, that we may be alone and
take pleasure each in each amidst of the flowers and the sun?”

Now as the two hosts drew near to one
another, again came the sound of trumpets afar off, and men knew
that this would be succour coming to the Romans from their
main-battle, and the Romans thereon shouted for joy, and the host
of the kindreds might no longer forbear, but rushed on fiercely
against them; and for Thiodolf it was now come to this, that so
entangled was he in his dream that he rather went with his men than
led them. Yet had he Throng-plough in his right hand, and he
muttered in his beard as he went, “Smite before! smite behind! and
smite on the right hand! but never on the left!”

Thus then they met, and as before, neither
might the Goths sweep the Romans away, nor the Romans break the
Goths into flight; yet were many of the kindred anxious and
troubled, since they knew that aid was coming to the Romans, and
they heard the trumpets sounding nearer and more joyous; and at
last, as the men of the kindreds were growing a-wearied with
fighting, they heard those horns as it were in their very ears, and
the thunder of the tramp of footmen, and they knew that a fresh
host of men was upon them; then those they had been fighting with
opened before them, falling aside to the right and the left, and
the fresh men passing between them, fell on the Goths like the
waters of a river when a sluice-gate is opened. They came on in
very good order, never breaking their ranks, but swift withal,
smiting and pushing before them, and so brake through the array of
the Goth-folk, and drave them this way and that way down the
slopes.

Yet still fought the warriors of the kindred
most valiantly, making stand and facing the foe again and again in
knots of a score or two score, or maybe ten score; and though many
a man was slain, yet scarce any one before he had slain or hurt a
Roman; and some there were, and they the oldest, who fought as if
they and the few about them were all the host that was left to the
folk, and heeded not that others were driven back, or that the
Romans gathered about them, cutting them off from all succour and
aid, but went on smiting till they were felled with many
strokes.

Howbeit the array of the Goths was broken
and many were slain, and perforce they must give back, and it
seemed as if they would be driven into the river and all be
lost.

But for Thiodolf, this befell him: that at
first, when those fresh men fell on, he seemed, as it were, to wake
unto himself again, and he cried aloud the cry of the Wolf, and
thrust into the thickest of the fray, and slew many and was hurt of
none, and for a moment of time there was an empty space round about
him, such fear he cast even into the valiant hearts of the foemen.
But those who had time to see him as they stood by him noted that
he was as pale as a dead man, and his eyes set and staring; and so
of a sudden, while he stood thus threatening the ring of doubtful
foemen, the weakness took him again, Throng-plough tumbled from his
hand, and he fell to earth as one dead.

Then of those who saw him some deemed that
he had been striving against some secret hurt till he could do no
more; and some that there was a curse abroad that had fallen upon
him and upon all the kindreds of the Mark; some thought him dead
and some swooning. But, dead or alive, the warriors would not leave
their War-duke among the foemen, so they lifted him, and gathered
about him a goodly band that held its own against all comers, and
fought through the turmoil stoutly and steadily; and others
gathered to them, till they began to be something like a host
again, and the Romans might not break them into knots of desperate
men any more.

Thus they fought their way, Arinbiorn of the
Bearings leading them now, with a mind to make a stand for life or
death on some vantage-ground; and so, often turning upon the
Romans, they came in array ever growing more solid to the rising
ground looking one way over the ford and the other to the slopes
where the battle had just been. There they faced the foe as men who
may be slain, but will be driven no further; and what bowmen they
had got spread out from their flanks and shot on the Romans, who
had with them no light-armed, or slingers or bowmen, for they had
left them at Wolf-stead. So the Romans stood a while, and gave
breathing-space to the Markmen, which indeed was the saving of
them: for if they had fallen on hotly and held to it steadily, it
is like that they would have passed over all the bodies of the
Markmen: for these had lost their leader, either slain, as some
thought, or, as others thought, banned from leadership by the Gods;
and their host was heavy-hearted; and though it is like that they
would have stood there till each had fallen over other, yet was
their hope grown dim, and the whole folk brought to a perilous and
fearful pass, for if these were slain or scattered there were no
more but they, and nought between fire and the sword and the people
of the Mark.

But once again the faint-heart folly of the
Roman Captain saved his foes: for whereas he once thought that the
whole power of the Markmen lay in Otter and his company, and deemed
them too little to meddle with, so now he ran his head into the
other hedge, and deemed that Thiodolf’s company was but a part of
the succour that was at hand for the Goths, and that they were
over-big for him to meddle with.

True it is also that now dark night was
coming on, and the land was unknown to the Romans, who moreover
trusted not wholly to the dastards of the Goths who were their
guides and scouts: furthermore the wood was at hand, and they knew
not what it held; and with all this and above it all, it is to be
said that over them also had fallen a dread of some doom anear; for
those habitations amidst of the wild-woods were terrible to them as
they were dear to the Goths; and the Gods of their foemen seemed to
be lying in wait to fall upon them, even if they should slay every
man of the kindreds.