Tales of Three Hemispheres
Page 5
A PRETTY QUARREL
On one of those unattained, and unattainable pinnacles that are knownas the Bleaks of Eerie, an eagle was looking East with a hopefulpresage of blood.
For he knew, and rejoiced in the knowledge, that eastward over thedells the dwarfs were risen in Ulk, and gone to war with thedemi-gods.
The demi-gods are they that were born of earthly women, but theirsires are the elder gods who walked of old among men. Disguised theywould go through the villages sometimes in summer evenings, cloakedand unknown of men; but the younger maidens knew them and always ranto them singing, for all that their elders said: in evenings long agothey had danced to the woods of the oak-trees. Their children dweltout-of-doors beyond the dells of the bracken, in the cool and heatherylands, and were now at war with the dwarfs.
Dour and grim were the demi-gods and had the faults of both parents,and would not mix with men but claimed the right of their fathers, andwould not play human games but forever were prophesying, and yet weremore frivolous than their mothers were, whom the fairies had longsince buried in wild wood gardens with more than human rites.
And being irked at their lack of rights and ill content with the land,and having no power at all over the wind and snow, and caring littlefor the powers they had, the demi-gods became idle, greasy, and slow;and the contemptuous dwarfs despised them ever.
The dwarfs were contemptuous of all things savouring of heaven, and ofeverything that was even partly divine. They were, so it has beensaid, of the seed of man; but, being squat and hairy like to thebeasts; they praised all beastly things, and bestiality was shownreverence among them, so far as reverence was theirs to show. So mostof all they despised the discontent of the demi-gods, who dreamed ofthe courts of heaven and power over wind and snow; for what better,said the dwarfs, could demi-gods do than nose in the earth for rootsand cover their faces with mire, and run with the cheerful goats andbe even as they?
Now in their idleness caused by their discontent, the seed of the godsand the maidens grew more discontented still, and only spake of orcared for heavenly things; until the contempt of the dwarfs, who heardof all these doings, was bridled no longer and it must needs be war.They burned spice, dipped in blood and dried, before the chief oftheir witches, sharpening their axes, and made war on the demi-gods.
They passed by night over the Oolnar Mountains, each dwarf with hisgood axe, the old flint war-axe of his fathers, a night when no moonshone, and they went unshod, and swiftly, to come on the demi-gods inthe darkness beyond the dells of Ulk, lying fat and idle andcontemptible.
And before it was light they found the heathery lands, and thedemi-gods lying lazy all over the side of a hill. The dwarfs stoletowards them warily in the darkness.
Now the art that the gods love most is the art of war: and when theseed of the gods and those nimble maidens awoke and found it was warit was almost as much to them as the godlike pursuits of heaven,enjoyed in the marble courts; or power over wind and snow. They alldrew out at once their swords of tempered bronze, cast down to themcenturies since on stormy nights when their fathers, drew them andfaced the dwarfs, and casting their idleness from them, fell on them,sword to axe. And the dwarfs fought hard that night, and bruised thedemi-gods sorely, hacking with those huge axes that had not spared theoaks. Yet for all the weight of their blows and the cunning of theiradventure, one point they had overlooked: _the demi-gods wereimmortal._
As the fight rolled on towards morning the fighters were fewer andfewer, yet for all the blows of the dwarfs men fell upon one sideonly.
Dawn came and the demi-gods were fighting against no more than six,and the hour that follows dawn, and the last of the dwarfs was gone.
And when the light was clear on that peak of the Bleaks of Eerie theeagle left his crag and flew grimly East, and found it was as he hadhoped in the matter of blood.
But the demi-gods lay down in their heathery lands, for once contentthough so far from the courts of heaven, and even half forgot theirheavenly rights, and sighed no more for power over wind and snow.