Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Let the soldiers once find our Amal at their head, and they will be ready to go with him a mile, where they meant to go a yard. 'The Goths will, and the Markmen, and those Dacians, and Thracians, or whatever the Romans call them. But I hardly trust the Huns. 'The curse of heaven on their pudding faces and pigs' eyes! There will be no love lost between us.
Then he answered, and his eyes grew kind as he looked on her: "For thy fair love I thank thee, and thy faithful word, O friend! But how might it otherwise happen but we twain must meet in the end, The God of this mighty people and the Markmen and their kin? Lo, this is the weird of the world, and what may we do herein?"
Thus went forth the host of the Markmen, faring along both sides of the water into the Upper-mark; and on the west side, where went the Wolfings, the ground now rose by a long slope into a low hill, and when they came unto the brow thereof, they beheld before them the whole plain of the Upper-mark, and the dwellings of the kindred therein all girdled about by the wild-wood; and beyond, the blue hills of the herdsmen, and beyond them still, a long way aloof, lying like a white cloud on the verge of the heavens, the snowy tops of the great mountains.
But when the stour was hard, and the battle was broken, and the hearts of men began to fail them, and doubt fell upon the Markmen, then was he another man to see: wise, but swift and dangerous, rushing on as if shot out by some mighty engine: heedful of all, on either side and in front; running hither and thither as the fight failed and the fire of battle faltered; his sword so swift and deadly that it was as if he wielded the very lightening of the heavens: for with the sword it was ever his wont to fight.
"Now many a thing noteworthy of these aliens did he say, But this I bid you hearken, lest I wear the time for nought, That still upon the Markmen and the Mark they set their thought; For they questioned this man and others through a go-between in words Of us, and our lands and our chattels, and the number of our swords; Of the way and the wild-wood passes and the winter and his ways.
Give back a little, Markmen, make way for men to pass To your ordered battle-dwelling o'er the trodden meadow-grass, For alive with men is the wild-wood and shineth with the steel, And hath a voice most merry to tell of the Kindreds' weal, 'Twixt each tree a warrior standeth come back from the spear-strewn way, And forth they come from the wild-wood and a little band are they."
For I have heard it said that they have more cities than one only, and that so great are their kindreds, that each liveth in a garth full of mighty houses, with a wall of stone and lime around it; and that in every one of these garths lieth wealth untold heaped up. And wherefore should not all this fall to the Markmen and their valiancy?"
But now they were beginning to turn them back again to the habitations, and a thin stream was flowing through the acres, when they heard a confused sound drawing near blended of horns and the lowing of beasts and the shouting of men; and they looked and saw a throng of brightly clad men coming up stream alongside of Mirkwood-water; and they were not afraid, for they knew that it must be some other company of the Markmen journeying to the hosting of the Folk: and presently they saw that it was the House of the Beamings following their banner on the way to the Thing- stead.
In numberless battles had he fought, and men deemed it a wonder that Odin had not taken to him a man so much after his own heart; and they said it was neighbourly done of the Father of the Slain to forbear his company so long, and showed how well he loved the Wolfing House. For a good while yet came other bands of Markmen into the Thing-stead; but at last there was an end of their coming.
There then were the dastards slain; and their bodies served for a rampart against the onrush of the Markmen to those Romans who had stood fast. To them were gathering more and more every minute, and they faced the Goths steadily with their hard brown visages and gleaming eyes above their iron- plated shields; not casting their spears, but standing closely together, silent, but fierce.
Word Of The Day