LITMIR.BIZ

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the flame of the fires while they flashed and touched.As with one man’s voice the words were spoken,and the oath uttered that must unrecalled640abide for ever, a bond of truthand friendship in arms, and faith in peril.Thus war was waked in the woods once morefor the foes of Faërie, and its fame widely,and the fear of that fellowship, now fared abroad;645when the horn was heard of the hunting Elvesthat shook the shaws and the sheer valleys.Blades were naked and bows twanging,and shafts from the shadows shooting wingéd,and the sons of darkness slain and conquered;650even in Angband the Orcs trembled.Then the word wandered down the ways of the forestthat Túrin Thalion was returned to war;and Thingol heard it, and his thanes were spedto lead the lost one in love to his halls –655but his fate was fashioned that they found him not.Little gold they got in that grim warfare,but weary watches and wounds for guerdon;nor on robber-raids now rode they ever,who fended from Faërie the fiends of Hell.660But Blodrin Bor’s son for booty lusted,for the loud laughter of the lawless days,and meats unmeasured, and mead-gobletsrefilled and filled, and the flagons of winethat went as water in their wild revels.665Now tales have told that trapped as a childhe was dragged by the Dwarves to their deep mansions,and in Nogrod nurtured, and in nought was like,spite blood and birth, to the blissful Elves.His heart hated Húrin’s offspring670and the bowman Beleg; so biding his whilehe fled their fellowship and forest hidingsto the merciless Orcs, whose moon-pallidcruel-curvéd blades to kill spare not;than whose greed for gold none greater burns675save in hungry hearts of the hell-dragons.He betrayed his troth; traitor made himand the forest fastness of his fellows in armshe opened to the Orcs, nor his oath heeded.There they fought and fell by foes outnumbered,680by treachery trapped at a time of nightwhen their fires faded and few were waking –some wakened never, not for wild noises,nor cries nor curses, nor clashing steel,swept as they slumbered to the slades of death.685But Túrin they took, though towering mightyat the Huntsman’s hand he hewed his foemen,as a bear at bay mid bellowing hounds,unheeding his hurts; at the hest of Morgothyet living they lapped him, his limbs entwining,690with hairy hands and hideous arms.Then Beleg was buried in the bodies of the fallen,as sorely wounded he swooned away;and all was over, and the Orcs triumphed.The dawn over Doriath dimly kindled695saw Blodrin Bor’s son by a beech standingwith throat thirléd by a thrusting arrow,whose shaven shaft, shod with poison,and feather-wingéd, was fast in the tree.He bargained the blood of his brothers for gold:700thus his meed was meted – in the mirk at randomby an orc-arrow his oath came home.

From the magic mazes of Melian the Queen
they haled unhappy Húrin’s offspring,
lest he flee his fate; but they fared slowly	705
and the leagues were long of their laboured way
over hill and hollow to the high places,
where the peaks and pinnacles of pitiless stone
looming up lofty are lapped in cloud,
and veiled in vapours vast and sable;	710
where Eiglir Engrin, the Iron Hills, lie
o’er the hopeless halls of Hell upreared
wrought at the roots of the roaring cliffs
of Thangorodrim’s thunderous mountain.
Thither led they laden with loot and evil;	715
but Beleg yet breathed in blood drenchéd
aswoon, till the sun to the South hastened,
and the eye of day was opened wide.
Then he woke and wondered, and weeping took him,
and to Túrin Thalion his thoughts were turned,	720
that o’erborne in battle and bound he had seen.
Then he crawled from the corpses that had covered him over,
weary, wounded, too weak to stand.
So Thingol’s thanes athirst and bleeding
in the forest found him: his fate willed not	725
that he should drink the draught of death from foes.
Thus they bore him back in bitter torment
his tidings to tell in the torchlit halls
of Thingol the king; in the Thousand Caves
to be healéd whole by the hands enchanted	730
of Melian Mablui, the moonlit queen.

Ere a week was outworn his wounds were cured,
but his heart’s heaviness those hands of snow
nor soothed nor softened, and sorrow-laden
he fared to the forest. No fellows sought he	735
in his hopeless hazard, but in haste alone
he followed the feet of the foes of Elfland,
the dread daring, and the dire anguish,
that held the hearts of Hithlum’s men
and Doriath’s doughtiest in a dream of fear.	740
Unmatched among Men, or magic-wielding
Elves, or hunters of the Orc-kindred,
or beasts of prey for blood pining,
was his craft and cunning, that cold and dead
an unseen slot could scent o’er stone,	745
foot-prints could find on forest pathways
that lightly on the leaves were laid in moons
long waned, and washed by windy rains.
The grim Glamhoth’s goblin armies
go cunning-footed, but his craft failed not	750
to tread their trail, till the lands were darkened,
and the light was lost in lands unknown.
Never-dawning night was netted clinging
in the black branches of the beetling trees;
oppressed by pungent pinewood’s odours,	755
and drowsed with dreams as the darkness thickened,
he strayed steerless. The stars were hid,
and the moon mantled. There magic foundered
in the gathering glooms, there goblins even
(whose deep eyes drill the darkest shadows)	760
bewildered wandered, who the way forsook
to grope in the glades, there greyly loomed
of girth unguessed in growth of ages
the topless trunks of trees enchanted.
That fathomless fold by folk of Elfland	765
is Taur-na-Fuin, the Trackless Forest
of Deadly Nightshade, dreadly naméd.
Abandoned, beaten, there Beleg lying
to the wind harkened winding, moaning
in bending boughs; to branches creaking	770
up high over head, where huge pinions
of the pluméd pine-trees complained darkly
in black foreboding. There bowed hopeless,
in wit wildered, and wooing death,
he saw on a sudden a slender sheen	775
shine a-shimmering in the shades afar,
like a glow-worm’s lamp a-gleaming dim.
He marvelled what it might be as he moved softly;
for he knew not the Gnomes of need delving
in the deep dungeons of dark Morgoth.	780
Unmatched their magic in metal-working,
who jewels and gems that rejoiced the Gods
aforetime fashioned, when they freedom held,
now swinking slaves of ceaseless labour
in Angband’s smithies, nor ever were suffered	785
to wander away, warded always.
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