'But to Stone-face's mind those brown-clad men were the Wights of the
Wood that be of the Fathers' blood, and our very friends; and when
some of us would yet have gone forward and foregathered with them,
and followed the chase along with them, Stone-face gainsaid it,
bidding us not to run into the arms of a second death, when we had
but just escaped from the first. Sooth to say, moreover, we had
divers hurt men that needed looking to.
'So what with one thing, what with another, we turned back: but War-
cliff's brother, a tall man, had felled two of those felons with an
oak sapling which he had torn from the thicket; but he had not slain
them, and by now they were just awakening from their swoon, and were
sitting up looking round them with fierce rolling eyes, expecting the
stroke, for Raven of Longscree was standing over them with a naked
war-sword in his hand. But now that our blood was cool, we were loth
to slay them as they lay in our hands; so we bound them and brought
them away with us; and our own dead we carried also on such biers as
we might lightly make there, and with them three that were so
grievously hurt that they might not go afoot, these we left at
Carlstead: they were Tardy the Son of the Untamed, and Swan of Bull-
meadow, both of the Lower Dale, and a Woodlander, Undoomed to wit.
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