Читать книгу The Lays of Beleriand онлайн | страница 27

In eager anger then up sprang Beleg,crying and calling, careless of Flinding:‘O Túrin, Túrin, my troth-brother,870to the brazen bonds shall I abandon thee,and the darkling doors of the Deeps of Hell?’

‘Thou wilt join his journey to the jaws of sorrow,O bowman crazéd, if thy bellowing cryto the Orcs should come; their ears than cats’875are keener whetted, and though the camp from herebe a day distant where those deeds I saw,who knows if the Gnome they now pursuethat crept from their clutches, as a crawling wormon belly cowering, whom they bleeding cast880in deathly swoon on the dung and sloughof their loathsome lair. O Light of Valinor!and ye glorious Gods! How gleam their eyes,and their tongues are red!’ ‘Yet I Túrin will wrestfrom their hungry hands, or to Hell be dragged,885or sleep with the slain in the slades of Death.Thy lamp shall lead us, and my lore rekindleand wise wood-craft!’ ‘O witless hunter,thy words are wild – wolves unsleepingand wizardry ward their woeful captives;890unerring their arrows; the icy steelof their curvéd blades cleaves unbluntedthe meshes of mail; the mirk to piercethose eyes are able; their awful laughterthe flesh freezes! I fare not thither,895for fear fetters me in the Forest of Night:better die in the dark dazed, forwandered,than wilfully woo that woe and anguish!I know not the way.’ ‘Are the knees then weakof Flinding go-Fuilin? Shall free-born Gnome900thus show himself a shrinking slave,who twice entrapped has twice escaped?Remember the might and the mirth of yore,the renown of the Gnomes of Nargothrond!’

Thus Beleg the bowman quoth bold-hearted,905but Flinding fought the fear of his heart,and loosed the light of his lamp of blue,now brighter burning. In the black mazesenwound they wandered, weary searching;by the tall tree-boles towering silent910oft barred and baffled; blindly stumblingover rock-fast roots writhing coiléd;and drowsed with dreams by the dark odours,till hope was hidden. ‘Hark thee, Flinding;viewless voices vague and distant,915a muffled murmur of marching feetthat are shod with stealth shakes the stillness.’