Here the adventurers stayed, breathing the pure wild air that cities know
not; by day they hunted, and lit fires by night, and sang and feasted, and
forgot Carcassonne. The terrible denizens of the gloom never molested
them, venison was plentiful, and all manner of water-fowl: they loved the
chase by day, and by night their favourite songs. Thus day after day went
by, thus week after week. Time flung over this encampment a handful of
moons, the gold and silver moons that waste the year away; Autumn and
Winter passed, and Spring appeared; and still the warriors hunted and
feasted there.
One night of the springtide they were feasting about a fire and telling
tales of the chase, and the soft moths came out of the dark and flaunted
their colours in the firelight, and went out grey into the dark again; and
the night wind was cool upon the warriors' necks, and the camp-fire was
warm in their faces, and a silence had settled among them after some song,
and Arleon all at once rose suddenly up, remembering Carcassonne. And his
hand swept over the strings of his harp, awaking the deeper chords, like
the sound of a nimble people dancing their steps on bronze, and the music
rolled away into the night's own silence, and the voice of Arleon rose:
"When there is blood in the bath she knows there is war in the mountains
and longs for the battle-shout of kingly men."
And suddenly all shouted, "Carcassonne!" And at that word their idleness
was gone as a dream is gone from a dreamer waked with a shout. And soon
the great march began that faltered no more nor wavered. Unchecked by
battles, undaunted in lonesome spaces, ever unwearied by the vulturous
years, the warriors of Camorak held on; and Arleon's inspiration led them
still. They cleft with the music of Arleon's harp the gloom of ancient
silences; they went singing into battles with terrible wild men, and came
out singing, but with fewer voices; they came to villages in valleys full
of the music of bells, or saw the lights at dusk of cottages sheltering
others.
They became a proverb for wandering, and a legend arose of strange,
disconsolate men. Folks spoke of them at nightfall when the fire was warm
and rain slipped down the eaves; and when the wind was high small children
feared the Men Who Would Not Rest were going clattering past. Strange
tales were told of men in old grey armour moving at twilight along the
tops of the hills and never asking shelter; and mothers told their boys
who grew impatient of home that the grey wanderers were once so impatient
and were now hopeless of rest, and were driven along with the rain
whenever the wind was angry.
But the wanderers were cheered in their wandering by the hope of coming to
Carcassonne, and later on by anger against Fate, and at last they marched
on still because it seemed better to march on than to think.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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