He spake these last words rather as one giving a command than making a prayer, and Birdalone feared him now sorely. Forsooth she had her bended bow in hand; but let alone that the knight was over-near to her that she might get a shaft out of her quiver and nock it, ere he should run in on her, and let alone also that he was byrnied, she scarce deemed that it behoved her to slay or wound the man because she would be quit of him. Wherefore angrily, and with a flushed face, she answered him: So shall it be then, Sir Knight; or rather so must it be, since thou compellest me. He laughed and said: Nay, now thou art angry. I compel thee not, I but say that it will not do for thee to compel me to leave thee. Go which way thou wilt, up the dale, or down it and out of it; it is all one unto me, so long as I am with thee. Forsooth, damsel, I have said harder words to ladies who have done my pleasure and not deemed themselves compelled. She paled but answered nought; then she mounted her palfrey, and the knight went to her bridle-rein without more words, and so led her on up the valley by the easiest way amongst the Greywethers. CHAPTER XI. BIRDALONE IS LED UP THE BLACK VALLEY. As they went, the knight fell a-talking to Birdalone, and that without any of the covert jeering which he had used erewhile; and he showed her places in the dale, as caverns under the burgs, and little eyots in the stream, and certain stones amongst the Greywethers whereof stories ran; and how this and the other one had fared in dealings with the land-wights, and how one had perished, and another had been made happy, and so forth. Withal he told of the mountain-folk, and in especial how they of the plains, when he was scarce more than a boy, had met them in battle in that same dale, and how fierce the fight was; whereas the mountain-men were fighting for a life of desires accomplished, which hitherto had been but a dream unto them; and the men of the plain fought for dear life itself, and for all that made it aught save death in life. Wherefore up and down the dale they fought, at first in ordered ranks and then in knots, and lastly sword to sword and man to man, till there was no foot of grass or black sand there which had not its shower of blood; and the stream was choked with the dead, and ran red out of the dale; till at last well-nigh all the host of the mountain-men was fallen, and scarce less of the folk of the plains, but these men held the field and had the victory.