William H. Babcock - Cian of the Chariots - Chapter XXIX: The Blowing of the Elfin Horn lyrics

CHAPTER XXIX. THE BLOWING OF THE ELFIN HORN. The Elfin knight sits on the hill, Ba, ba, ba, lilli, ba. He blows his horn both loud and shrill – The wind has blown my plaid awa. – Old Ballad. THUS far Dynan's task had been light, though his heart grew hourly heavier. As yet no great effort of the enemy had been directed his way, – the western side. But he had no hope that he should escape what was coming. At midnight a tongue of fire leaped up tree-top high on the line between him and Argoed. The Saxons of the rock-fort saw it, and cried, "The Torch of Cyllalaur," as they burst out in full strength after this far-summoning leader. Llywarch, remote in the wilderness, also took it for his guide. But no other was stirred to such swiftness as Dynan. Calling his nearest men, he sprang on the horse ready-saddled beside him, and rode madly for the enemy who thus held the path to the lady of his hopeless love. Away behind he heard the sounds of onset, but not now could he turn to them. [Page 280] Before very long the burning tree died down, but there were sparks and flickers enough to show him the way; and soon the moon came out, spreading a good light in many places before him. Even under the trees he could see dimly. In that half-light of haze and shadow he came suddenly on a ma**ing and stir of figures about the border of a glade, and saw the breath of the wind awaken the last beacon-embers above them. He skirted these men hastily, and kept on. There was a hubbub of indecision, and one or two spears were thrown; but the way lay open before him, with all his enemies behind. When very sure of this, he drew rein, and his horse nearly sank under him. It was a barren pa** where he halted, with an upward slant between two hills, the one of rounding contour, in a billowy garment of low shrubbery; the other an abrupt, all but overhanging, rocky ma**, with distorted, out-thrusting boughs and uncanny roots, twisted and down-reaching. A little above him, where the way widened, a low yew-tree divided it, over-shading the leaden glint of a spring, with yet more uncertain outlines behind. It needed only a breath of air or a shifting of moonbeams to set all astir. To Dynan's fancy, life was everywhere about him now, though whether friendly or hateful he could not say. There could be no question as to the hurried [Page 281] voices and clanking which he heard far down the glen. They would be too many for him he doubted; and what aid but from one – who would surely come at the magic summons, with her own price for salvation, – the price of the downward way. Over his soul crept the sense of a chill, unhuman tricksomeness and terror – all the uncertain attributes haunting the shadow of a hapless and vanished race. "Not yet!" he cried aloud. "Not with the sun of Argoed in my veins and the life of the race of man! Not for any need or torment of my own. But Freur! – to save Freur! – if all else fails; it is the path to Freur I am guarding." Now the sounds were near, and others, greater, arose far behind. He judged that a few of the fleetest were sent after him, while Ossa fell on the rear of the oaken wall where the first Saxons were cutting through it. There his post had been, deserted now, as never before since he first learned duty. He set his face bitterly at the thought. The moon tipped something that moved a little below him, and he wheeled back under the tree. There were calls, as though he had been seen or heard, and then a quick scrambling up the slope. He could see them now, a panting horse, the rider, and two footmen, well blown, dragging by the thighs of him. At once he darted on them out of the gloom, [Page 282] spearing the horse in the nostrils, so that he reared and reeled over, dashing two of the party headlong, while the lance-point, deftly shifting, caught the other runner quite full in front, piercing to the spine. It was plucked out again, but not soon enough to reach the other two, who were tumbling back to their comrades, very much shaken. The horse was there before them. The fairy's son vanished under the yew. The slain Saxon lay all alone in the road. Dynan heard the muttering of consultation below; and they mounted again, in greater number this time, on foot, two by two. As the foremost pair reached the corpse, the taller of them cursed audibly, but broke his curse midway at sight of the ambushed figure. "A demon!" he cried; and with the word the darted weapon took him, and horse and man leaped out after it together as he fell. The man beside him wounded Dynan's horse, but went down under a sword-cut; and the cry of the dead man, "A demon, a demon!" echoing from lip to lip, far more bore back those who followed than did his charge. Presently they were fleeing down the road, with Dynan right upon them, so that he would have slain another or more than one but that his horse fell. Therefore he went back regretfully and listened. He could hear now the sound, not far away, of metal stricken together, and angry cries, which in that age alone gave notice of combat. He knew that the Sax-[Page 283] ons must have at last cut an outlet, and that a good part, at least, of Arthur's army, beyond question, had swept round on one or both sides to a**ail them. Yet in, spite of all, they were coming his way, the way to Argoed. In no long time the first of this fugitive army overtook those who had attacked him, and halted in perturbation, wild to go on, since Arthur, with Lancelot and Caradoc, were behind them, yet by no means in love with any wood demon either. By the growing sound of their voices he could tell how they gathered, until at last, when some of tougher fibre came up, there was a strong movement toward him. They came rapidly, if not with perfect steadiness, filling the whole pa**; a great clamor of fighting, not far behind, urging them on. Then he held the horn very tightly in his left hand, ready for instant use, and with the other flashed out his sword, leaping before them with a keen, quavering cry, like no human fighting sound that ever was heard. It made them swerve and eddy a little; and before they could settle again, the fairy's son was flitting miraculously before, about, and among them, leaving one blinded by the gash along his brow, another sinking on his knee with severed tendons, – a lithe little fury of attack, exceeding even himself in his own bewildering strategy. Three men had fallen, and more were bleeding, and the line had been kept [Page 284] stationary a minute or more, in spite of the upward crowding, before the Saxons were well aware that the wild cat who thus clawed the front of their array was quite alone and human after all. Then a roar went up of mingled amusement, admiration, anger, and mutual derision; and they closed upon him in a semicircle, wild with the great need to clear the way. Feeling his doom very near, Dynan sprang about and darted back in a frenzy, keeping his enemies as nearly as he might before him, dodging and dealing blows, and sometimes taking them, until the blood spurted, a human fox in the very jaws of the hounds. He felt, rather than saw, the yew-tree over him. He felt his foot plash and slip in the runnel from the spring. He saw a medley of weapons and faces thronging up almost against his own on every side. With one swing of his blade to keep them off a second, he clapped the elfin horn to his mouth, and blew. So strange was the sound, so ear-splitting and jangling, so cavernous in the echo, that the a**ailants drew breath and shrank, looking about them. He staggered back against the trunk, murmured weakly, "For Freur!" and blew again. Then, whether it were echo, or wound-disordered fancy, or the call of human allies thronging to him in his need, or something verily more dread to all, there did certainly seem to come from cliff and hill [Page 285] and hollow fountain-depth and the waste of pallid, moonlit air a multitudinous answer. All nature was full of it and of stormy figures hurrying to the onset. His eyes closed weakly, but he seemed to hear the crash of unearthly havoc and yells of Saxon dismay. As he lifted his eyelids again, he saw, or thought he saw, a figure, as of the haze, waving the a**ailants on. She turned her face toward him, and he pa**ed into the swoon of one drained of blood. Then, in trance, he felt uplifted bodily, and borne far away. Hope, choice, even wish, had wholly left him. Yet he seemed to know that he was journeying to the hollow land of his forsaken and haunting race. The arms of the dread lady of his dream were around him. When Llywarch and his belated horsemen broke in through the upper end of the pa**, they saw wild figures in tumultuous movement, and heard the sounds of fight and flight before them, which they could not by any diligence overtake. In after fancy, they seemed to have ridden behind a whirlwind of spectral violence.