BIARTEY (_interrupting him_) Out of the bosoms of cairns and standing stones. I am Biartey: she is Jofrid: she is Gudfinn: We are lone women known to no man now. We are not sent: we come. GUNNAR Well, you come. You appear by night, rising under my eyes Like marshy breath or shadows on the wall; Yet the hound scented you like any evil That feels upon the night for a way out. And do you, then, indeed wend alone? Came you from the West or the sky-covering North Yet saw no thin steel moving in the dark? BIARTEY Not West, not North: we slept upon the East, Arising in the East where no men dwell. We have abided in the mountain places, Chanted our woes among the black rocks crouching. (GUDFINN _joins her in a sing-song utterance._) From the East, from the East we drove and the wind waved us, Over the heaths, over the barren ashes. We are old, our eyes are old, and the light hurts us, We have skins on our eyes that part alone to the star-light. We stumble about the night, the rocks tremble Beneath our trembling feet; black sky thickens, Breaks into clots, and lets the moon upon us. (JOFRID _joins her voice to the voices of the other two._) Far from the men who fear us, men who stone us, Hiding, hiding, flying whene'er they slumber, High on the crags we pause, over the moon-gulfs; Black clouds fall and leave us up in the moon-depths Where wind flaps our hair and cloaks like fin-webs, Ay, and our sleeves that toss with our arms and the cadence Of quavering crying among the threatening echoes. Then we spread our cloaks and leap down the rock-stairs, Sweeping the heaths with our skirts, greying the dew-bloom, Until we feel a pool on the wide dew stretches Stilled by the moon or ruffling like breast-feathers, And, with grey sleeves cheating the sleepy herons, Squat among them, pillow us there and sleep. But in the harder wastes we stand upright, Like splintered rain-worn boulders set to the wind In old confederacy, and rest and sleep. (HALLGERD'S _women are huddled together and clasping each other._) ODDNY What can these women be who sleep like horses, Standing up in the darkness? What will they do? GUNNAR Ye wail like ravens and have no human thoughts. What do ye seek? What will ye here with us? BIARTEY (_as all three cower suddenly_) Succour upon this terrible journeying. We have a message for a man in the West, Sent by an old man sitting in the East. We are spent, our feet are moving wounds, our bodies Dream of themselves and seem to trail behind us Because we went unfed down in the mountains. Feed us and shelter us beneath your roof, And put us over the Markfleet, over the channels. We are weak old women: we are beseeching you.