The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbours, Their Foemen, and Their Fellows in ArmsMorris, William
Science
The Roots of the Mountains: Wherein Is Told Somewhat of the Lives of the Men of Burgdale, Their Friends, Their Neighbours, Their Foemen, and Their Fellows in Arms
Morris, William
Fantasy fiction
Then poured the Folk up over the stairs and into the Hall of the Wolf,
the banners flapping over their heads; and first went the War-leader and
Folk-might and Hall-face, and then the three delivered thralls,
Wolf-stone, God-swain, and Spear-fist, and Dallach with them, though both
he and Wolf-stone had been hurt in the battle; and then came blended
together the Men of the Face along with them of the Wolf who had entered
the Market-stead with them, and with these were Stone-face and Wood-wont
and Bow-may, leading the Sun-beam betwixt them; and now was she come to
herself again, though her face was yet pale, and her eyes gleamed as she
stepped across the threshold of the Hall.
But when a many were gotten in, and the first-comers had had time to
handle their weapons and look about them, a cry of the utmost wrath broke
from Folk-might and those others who remembered the Hall from of old.
For wretched and befouled was that well-builded house: the hangings rent
away; the goodly painted walls daubed and smeared with wicked tokens of
the Alien murderers: the floor, once bright with polished stones of the
mountain, and strewn with sweet-smelling flowers, was now as foul as the
den of the man-devouring troll of the heaths. From the fair-carven roof
of oak and chestnut-beams hung ugly knots of rags and shapeless images of
the sorcery of the Dusky Men. And furthermore, and above all, from the
last tie-beam of the roof over the daïs dangled four shapes of
men-at-arms, whom the older men of the Wolf knew at once for the embalmed
bodies of their four great chieftains, who had been slain on the day of
the Great Undoing; and they cried out with horror and rage as they saw
them hanging there in their weapons as they had lived.
There was the Hostage of the Earth, his shield painted with the green
world circled with the worm of the sea. There was the older Folk-might,
the uncle of the living man, bearing a shield with an oak and a lion done
thereon. There was Wealth-eker, on whose shield was done a golden sheaf
of wheat. There was he who bore a name great from of old, Folk-wolf to
wit, bearing on his shield the axe of the hewer. There they hung, dusty,
befouled, with sightless eyes and grinning mouths, in the dimmed sunlight
of the Hall, before the eyes of that victorious Host, stricken silent at
the sight of them.
Underneath them on the daïs stood the last remnant of the battle of the
Dusky Men; and they, as men mad with coming death, shook their weapons,
and with shrieking laughter mocked at the overcomers, and pointed to the
long-dead chiefs, and called on them in the tongue of the kindreds to
come down and lead their dear kinsmen to the high-seat; and then they
cried out to the living warriors of the Wolf, and bade them better their
deed of slaying, and set to work to make alive again, and cause their
kinsmen to live merry on the earth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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