The Lays of Beleriand. Christopher Tolkien
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Название: The Lays of Beleriand

Автор: Christopher Tolkien

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Ужасы и Мистика

Серия: The History of Middle-earth

isbn: 9780007348206

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ in battle the blood of their wounds.

Then Túrin’s heart was turned from hate,
and he bade unbind Beleg the huntsman.585
‘Now fare thou free! But, of friendship aught
if thy heart yet holds for Húrin’s son,
never tell thou tale that Túrin thou sawst
an outlaw unloved from Elves and Men,
whom Thingol’s thanes yet thirst to slay.590
Betray not my trust or thy troth of yore!’
Then Beleg of the bow embraced him there –
he had not fared to the feast or the fall of Orgof –
there kissed him kindly comfort speaking:
‘Lo! nought know I of the news thou tellest;595
but outlawed or honoured thou ever shalt be
the brother of Beleg, come bliss come woe!
Yet little me likes that thy leaping sword
the life should drink of the leaguered Elves.
Are the grim Glamhoth then grown so few,600
or the foes of Faërie feeble-hearted,
that warlike Men have no work to do?
Shall the foes of Faërie be friends of Men?
Betrayest thou thy troth whom we trusted of yore?’

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

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

Thus hope in the heart of Húrin’s offspring615
awoke at those words; and them well likéd
of that band the boldest, save Blodrin only –
Blodrin Bor’s son, who for blood and for gold
alone lusted, and little he recked
whom he robbed of riches or reft of life,620
were it Elf or Orc; but he opened not
the thoughts of his heart. There throbbed the harp,
where the fires flickered, and the flaming brands
of pine were piled in the place of their camp;
where glad men gathered in good friendship625
as 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;630
of 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 unchanging635
as Tain-Gwethil’s towering mountain!’
Their blades were bared, as blood shining
in 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 unrecalled640
abide for ever, a bond of truth
and friendship in arms, and faith in peril.
Thus war was waked in the woods once more
for the foes of Faërie, and its fame widely,
and the fear of that fellowship, now fared abroad;645
when the horn was heard of the hunting Elves
that 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;650
even in Angband the Orcs trembled.
Then the word wandered down the ways of the forest
that Túrin Thalion was returned to war;
and Thingol heard it, and his thanes were sped
to lead the lost one in love to his halls –655
but 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.660
But Blodrin Bor’s son for booty lusted,
for the loud laughter of the lawless days,
and meats unmeasured, and mead-goblets
refilled and filled, and the flagons of wine
that went as water in their wild revels.665
Now tales have told that trapped as a child
he 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 offspring670
and the bowman Beleg; so biding his while
he fled their fellowship and forest hidings
to the merciless Orcs, whose moon-pallid
cruel-curvéd blades to kill spare not;
than whose greed for gold none greater burns675
save in hungry hearts of the hell-dragons.
He betrayed his troth; traitor made him
and the forest fastness of his fellows in arms
he opened to the Orcs, nor his oath heeded.
There they fought and fell by foes outnumbered,680
by treachery trapped at a time of night
when 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.685
But Túrin they took, though towering mighty
at the Huntsman’s hand he hewed his foemen,
as a bear at bay mid bellowing hounds,
unheeding his hurts; at the hest of Morgoth
yet living they lapped him, his limbs entwining,690
with 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 kindled695
saw Blodrin Bor’s son by a beech standing
with 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:700
thus his meed was meted – in the mirk at random
by 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 slowly705
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 not725
that he should drink the draught of death from foes.
Thus they bore him back in bitter СКАЧАТЬ