Читать книгу The Lays of Beleriand онлайн | страница 24

‘Nor of arméd Orc, nor [of] Elf of the wood,605nor of any on earth have I honour or love,O Beleg the bowman. This band aloneI count as comrades, my kindred in woeand friendless fate – our foes the world.’

‘Let the bow of Beleg to your band be joined;610and swearing death to the sons of darknesslet us suage our sorrow and the smart of fate!Our valour is not vanquished, nor vain the glorythat once we did win in the woods of old.’

Thus hope in the heart of Húrin’s offspring615awoke at those words; and them well likédof that band the boldest, save Blodrin only –Blodrin Bor’s son, who for blood and for goldalone lusted, and little he reckedwhom he robbed of riches or reft of life,620were it Elf or Orc; but he opened notthe thoughts of his heart. There throbbed the harp,where the fires flickered, and the flaming brandsof pine were piled in the place of their camp;where glad men gathered in good friendship625as dusk fell down on the drear woodland.Then a song on a sudden soaring loudly –and the trees up-looming towering harkened –was raised of the Wrack of the Realm of the Gods;of the need of the Gnomes on the Narrow Crossing;630of the fight at Fangros, and Fëanor’s sons’oath unbreakable. Then up sprang Beleg:‘That our vaunt and our vows be not vain for ever,even such as they swore, those seven chieftains,an oath let us swear that is unchanging635as Tain-Gwethil’s towering mountain!’Their blades were bared, as blood shiningin 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.