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the flame of the fires while they flashed and touched.
| As with one man’s voice the words were spoken, | |
and the oath uttered that must unrecalled | 640 |
abide for ever, a bond of truth | |
and friendship in arms, and faith in peril. | |
Thus war was waked in the woods once more | |
for the foes of Faërie, and its fame widely, | |
and the fear of that fellowship, now fared abroad; | 645 |
when the horn was heard of the hunting Elves | |
that shook the shaws and the sheer valleys. | |
Blades were naked and bows twanging, | |
and shafts from the shadows shooting wingéd, | |
and the sons of darkness slain and conquered; | 650 |
even in Angband the Orcs trembled. | |
Then the word wandered down the ways of the forest | |
that Túrin Thalion was returned to war; | |
and Thingol heard it, and his thanes were sped | |
to lead the lost one in love to his halls – | 655 |
but his fate was fashioned that they found him not. | |
Little gold they got in that grim warfare, | |
but weary watches and wounds for guerdon; | |
nor on robber-raids now rode they ever, | |
who fended from Faërie the fiends of Hell. | 660 |
But Blodrin Bor’s son for booty lusted, | |
for the loud laughter of the lawless days, | |
and meats unmeasured, and mead-goblets | |
refilled and filled, and the flagons of wine | |
that went as water in their wild revels. | 665 |
Now tales have told that trapped as a child | |
he was dragged by the Dwarves to their deep mansions, | |
and in Nogrod nurtured, and in nought was like, | |
spite blood and birth, to the blissful Elves. | |
His heart hated Húrin’s offspring | 670 |
and the bowman Beleg; so biding his while | |
he fled their fellowship and forest hidings | |
to the merciless Orcs, whose moon-pallid | |
cruel-curvéd blades to kill spare not; | |
than whose greed for gold none greater burns | 675 |
save in hungry hearts of the hell-dragons. | |
He betrayed his troth; traitor made him | |
and the forest fastness of his fellows in arms | |
he opened to the Orcs, nor his oath heeded. | |
There they fought and fell by foes outnumbered, | 680 |
by treachery trapped at a time of night | |
when their fires faded and few were waking – | |
some wakened never, not for wild noises, | |
nor cries nor curses, nor clashing steel, | |
swept as they slumbered to the slades of death. | 685 |
But Túrin they took, though towering mighty | |
at the Huntsman’s hand he hewed his foemen, | |
as a bear at bay mid bellowing hounds, | |
unheeding his hurts; at the hest of Morgoth | |
yet living they lapped him, his limbs entwining, | 690 |
with hairy hands and hideous arms. | |
Then Beleg was buried in the bodies of the fallen, | |
as sorely wounded he swooned away; | |
and all was over, and the Orcs triumphed. | |
The dawn over Doriath dimly kindled | 695 |
saw Blodrin Bor’s son by a beech standing | |
with throat thirléd by a thrusting arrow, | |
whose shaven shaft, shod with poison, | |
and feather-wingéd, was fast in the tree. | |
He bargained the blood of his brothers for gold: | 700 |
thus his meed was meted – in the mirk at random | |
by an orc-arrow his oath came home. | |
From the magic mazes of Melian the Queen | |
they haled unhappy Húrin’s offspring, | |
lest he flee his fate; but they fared slowly | 705 |
and the leagues were long of their laboured way | |
over hill and hollow to the high places, | |
where the peaks and pinnacles of pitiless stone | |
looming up lofty are lapped in cloud, | |
and veiled in vapours vast and sable; | 710 |
where Eiglir Engrin, the Iron Hills, lie | |
o’er the hopeless halls of Hell upreared | |
wrought at the roots of the roaring cliffs | |
of Thangorodrim’s thunderous mountain. | |
Thither led they laden with loot and evil; | 715 |
but Beleg yet breathed in blood drenchéd | |
aswoon, till the sun to the South hastened, | |
and the eye of day was opened wide. | |
Then he woke and wondered, and weeping took him, | |
and to Túrin Thalion his thoughts were turned, | 720 |
that o’erborne in battle and bound he had seen. | |
Then he crawled from the corpses that had covered him over, | |
weary, wounded, too weak to stand. | |
So Thingol’s thanes athirst and bleeding | |
in the forest found him: his fate willed not | 725 |
that he should drink the draught of death from foes. | |
Thus they bore him back in bitter torment | |
his tidings to tell in the torchlit halls | |
of Thingol the king; in the Thousand Caves | |
to be healéd whole by the hands enchanted | 730 |
of Melian Mablui, the moonlit queen. | |
Ere a week was outworn his wounds were cured, | |
but his heart’s heaviness those hands of snow | |
nor soothed nor softened, and sorrow-laden | |
he fared to the forest. No fellows sought he | 735 |
in his hopeless hazard, but in haste alone | |
he followed the feet of the foes of Elfland, | |
the dread daring, and the dire anguish, | |
that held the hearts of Hithlum’s men | |
and Doriath’s doughtiest in a dream of fear. | 740 |
Unmatched among Men, or magic-wielding | |
Elves, or hunters of the Orc-kindred, | |
or beasts of prey for blood pining, | |
was his craft and cunning, that cold and dead | |
an unseen slot could scent o’er stone, | 745 |
foot-prints could find on forest pathways | |
that lightly on the leaves were laid in moons | |
long waned, and washed by windy rains. | |
The grim Glamhoth’s goblin armies | |
go cunning-footed, but his craft failed not | 750 |
to tread their trail, till the lands were darkened, | |
and the light was lost in lands unknown. | |
Never-dawning night was netted clinging | |
in the black branches of the beetling trees; | |
oppressed by pungent pinewood’s odours, | 755 |
and drowsed with dreams as the darkness thickened, | |
he strayed steerless. The stars were hid, | |
and the moon mantled. There magic foundered | |
in the gathering glooms, there goblins even | |
(whose deep eyes drill the darkest shadows) | 760 |
bewildered wandered, who the way forsook | |
to grope in the glades, there greyly loomed | |
of girth unguessed in growth of ages | |
the topless trunks of trees enchanted. | |
That fathomless fold by folk of Elfland | 765 |
is Taur-na-Fuin, the Trackless Forest | |
of Deadly Nightshade, dreadly naméd. | |
Abandoned, beaten, there Beleg lying | |
to the wind harkened winding, moaning | |
in bending boughs; to branches creaking | 770 |
up high over head, where huge pinions | |
of the pluméd pine-trees complained darkly | |
in black foreboding. There bowed hopeless, | |
in wit wildered, and wooing death, | |
he saw on a sudden a slender sheen | 775 |
shine a-shimmering in the shades afar, | |
like a glow-worm’s lamp a-gleaming dim. | |
He marvelled what it might be as he moved softly; | |
for he knew not the Gnomes of need delving | |
in the deep dungeons of dark Morgoth. | 780 |
Unmatched their magic in metal-working, | |
who jewels and gems that rejoiced the Gods | |
aforetime fashioned, when they freedom held, | |
now swinking slaves of ceaseless labour | |
in Angband’s smithies, nor ever were suffered | 785 |
to wander away, warded always. | |
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