Читать книгу The Lays of Beleriand онлайн | страница 10

The ways were weary and woven with deceit175o’er the hills of Hithlum to the hidden kingdomdeep in the darkness of Doriath’s forest;and never ere now for need or wonderhad children of Men chosen that pathway,and few of the folk have followed it since.180There Túrin and the twain knew torment of thirst,and hunger and fear and hideous nights,for wolfriders and wandering Orcsand the Things of Morgoth thronged the woodland.Magics were about them, that they missed their ways185and strayed steerless, and the stars were hid.Thus they passed the mountains, but the mazes of Doriathwildered and wayworn in wanhope bound them.They had nor bread nor water, and bled of strengththeir death they deemed it to die forewandered,190when they heard a horn that hooted afar,and baying dogs. It was Beleg the hunter,who farthest fared of his folk abroadahunting by hill and hollow valley,who cared not for concourse and commerce of men.195He was great of growth and goodly-limbed,but lithe of girth, and lightly on the groundhis footsteps fell as he fared towards them,all garbed in grey and green and brown –a son of the wilderness who wist no sire.200

‘Who are ye?’ he asked. ‘Outlaws, or maybehard hunted men whom hate pursueth?’

‘Nay, for famine and thirst we faint,’ saith Halog,‘wayworn and wildered, and wot not the road.Or hast not heard of the hills of slain,205or the tear-drenchéd field where the terror and fireof Morgoth devoured both Men and Elves?There Thalion Erithámrod and his thanes like godsvanished from the earth, and his valiant ladyweeps yet widowed as she waits in Hithlum.210Thou lookest on the last of the lieges of Morwinand Thalion’s son Túrin, who to Thingol’s courtare wending by the word of the wife of Húrin.’

Then Beleg bade them be blithe, and said:‘The Gods have guided you to good keeping.215I have heard of the house of Húrin the Steadfast –and who hath not heard of the hills of slain,of Nínin Unothradin, the Unnumbered Tears?To that war I went not, but wage a feudwith the Orcs unending, whom mine arrows bitter220oft stab unseen and strike to death.I am the huntsman Beleg of the Hidden People.’Then he bade them drink, and drew from his belta flask of leather full filled with winethat is bruised from the berries of the burning South –225and the Gnome-folk know it, and the nation of the Elves,and by long ways lead it to the lands of the North.There bakéd flesh and bread from his walletthey had to their hearts’ joy; but their heads were mazedby the wine of Dor-Winion that went in their veins,230and they soundly slept on the soft needlesof the tall pine-trees that towered above.Later they wakened and were led by waysdevious winding through the dark wood-realmby slade and slope and swampy thicket235through lonely days and long night-times,and but for Beleg had been baffled utterlyby the magic mazes of Melian the Queen.To the shadowy shores he showed the waywhere stilly that stream strikes ’fore the gates240of the cavernous court of the King of Doriath.O’er the guarded bridge he gained a passage,and thrice they thanked him, and thought in their hearts‘the Gods are good’ – had they guessed maybewhat the future enfolded they had feared to live.245