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Now again uprose the cry, and there stood before the War-leader a very tall man of fifty winters, dark-faced and grey-eyed, and he spake slowly and somewhat softly, and said: 'War-leader, this is Red-wolf of the Woodlanders leading the men who go under the sign of the War-shaft, to the number of an hundred and two.
Hear the bidding of the War-shaft! All men, both thralls and free, 'Twixt twenty winters and sixty, beneath the shield shall be, And the hosting is at the Thing-stead, the Upper-mark anigh; And we wend away to-morrow ere the Sun is noon-tide high."
"Let it bleed," said he, "till I have examined the point. It does not look like a war-shaft; but the Navajoes use a very subtle poison. Fortunately I possess the means of detecting it, as well as its antidote." As he said this, he took from his pouch a tuft of raw cotton. With this he rubbed the blood lightly from the blade.
Well, the loss of a shaft will not matter, since I noticed, also, that this one was differently barbed from the others, and double feathered; a true Roman war-shaft, such as they do not make here. If any find your wounded beast you will not get its hide, since it is known that you do not use such arrows."
The warden of Geats, with bolt from bow, then balked of life, of wave-work, one monster, amid its heart went the keen war-shaft; in water it seemed less doughty in swimming whom death had seized. Swift on the billows, with boar-spears well hooked and barbed, it was hard beset, done to death and dragged on the headland, wave-roamer wondrous. Warriors viewed the grisly guest.
I bear the shaft of battle that is four-wise cloven through, And its each end dipped in the blood-stream, both the iron and the horn, And its midmost scathed with the fire; and the word that I have borne Along with this war-token is, 'Wolfings of the Mark Whenso ye see the war-shaft, by the daylight or the dark, Busk ye to battle faring, and leave all work undone Save the gathering for the handplay at the rising of the sun.
Last came another tall man, but young, of twenty-five winters, and spake: 'Scrivener, I am Bears-bane of the Woodlanders, and these that come after me wend under the sign of the Spear, and they are of the tale of one hundred and seven. And he passed by at once, and his men followed him, clad and weaponed no otherwise than they of the War-shaft, and with them were two women.
As for the Woodlanders, they said that they were abiding their great banner, but it should come in good time; 'and meantime, said they, 'here are the war-tokens that we shall fight under; for they are good enough banners for us poor men, the remnant of the valiant of time past. Therewith they showed two great spears, and athwart the one was tied an arrow, its point dipped in blood, its feathers singed with fire; and they said, 'This is the banner of the War-shaft.
But when the last sound of the horn had died away, then said Thiodolf: "Now Wolfing children hearken, what the splintered War-shaft saith, The fire scathed blood-stained aspen! we shall ride for life or death, We warriors, a long journey with the herd and with the wain; But unto this our homestead shall we wend us back again, All the gleanings of the battle; and here for them that live Shall stand the Roof of the Wolfings, and for them shall the meadow thrive, And the acres give their increase in the harvest of the year; Now is no long departing since the Hall-Sun bideth here 'Neath the holy Roof of the Fathers, and the place of the Wolfing kin, And the feast of our glad returning shall yet be held therein.
Its might lay not only in the range of the heavy war-shaft, a range we are told of four hundred yards, but in its force. The English archer, taught from very childhood "how to draw, how to lay his body to the bow," his skill quickened by incessant practice and constant rivalry with his fellows, raised the bow into a terrible engine of war.
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