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Updated: June 5, 2025
The carles of Burgdale listened eagerly to what he said, and they looked at him with great eyes and marvelled; and their hearts were moved with pity towards him; and Stone-face said: 'Herein, O War-leader, need I give thee no rede, for thou mayst see clearly that all we deem that we should lose our manhood and become the dastards of the Warrior if we did not abide the coming of these poor men, and take them back to the Dale, and cherish them.
Yet, moreover, they have foemen in the woods who should be fellows-in-arms of us. How sayest thou, Stone-face? Thou art old, and hast seen many wars in the Dale, and knowest the Wild-wood to its innermost. 'Alderman, said Stone-face, 'and ye neighbours of the Dale, maybe these foes whom ye have met are not of the race of man, but are trolls and wood-wights.
Yet even then thou shalt have no such dainties as Stone-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 but simple, of curds and new cheese, meat of the herdsmen. But Face-of- god said gaily: 'Sweet it shall be to me; good is all that the Friend giveth.
Stone-face also noted him, and he knew the young man better than all others save the Bride, and he saw withal that she was ill-pleased, and he said to himself: 'I will speak to my fosterling to-morrow if I may find him alone.
Now was Face-of-god of the same mind as Stone-face; and he said moreover: 'When we go to Rose-dale we must abide there a while unless we be overthrown.
'But to Stone-face's mind those brown-clad men were the Wights of the Wood that be of the Fathers' blood, and our very friends; and when some of us would yet have gone forward and foregathered with them, and followed the chase along with them, Stone-face gainsaid it, bidding us not to run into the arms of a second death, when we had but just escaped from the first.
So they went down to the water and washed the night from off them; and thence the most part of them went back to their lair among the thorn-bushes: but four of them went up the dale into the oak-wood to shoot a buck, and five more they sent out to watch their skirts around them; and Face-of-god with old Stone-face went over a ford of the stream, and came on to the lower slope of the burg, and so went up it to the top.
Hall-face was gone on the woodland ward; while Face-of-god went among the folk in his most glorious attire; but he soon betook him to the place of meeting without the Gate, where Stone-face and some of the elders were sitting along with the Alderman, beside whom sat the head man of the merchants, clad in a gown of fine scarlet embroidered with the best work of the Dale, with a golden chaplet on his head, and a good sword, golden-hilted, by his side, all which the Alderman had given to it him that morning.
Said Stone-face: 'Meseemeth, War-leader, that there is nought much to dread in leaving Rose-dale to itself for a while; for not only may we follow hard on the fleers if they flee to Rose-dale, and be there no long time after them, before they have time to stir their host but also after the overthrow we shall be free to send men back to Burgdale by way of Shadowy Vale.
On the morrow Face-of-god took counsel with Hall-face and Stone-face as to what were best to be done, and they sat on the dais in the Hall to talk it over.
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