Such things I have
heard of when I was young, and the aspect of the evil men who overran
the kindreds of old time, according to all tales and lays that I have
heard, is even such as the aspect of those whom we have seen of late.
As to those wolves who saved the neighbours and chased their foemen,
there is one here who belike knoweth more of all this than we do, and
that, O Alderman, is thy son whom I have fostered, Face-of-god to
wit. Bid him answer to thy questioning, and tell us what he hath
seen and heard of late; then shall we verily know the whole story as
far as it can be known.'
Then men pressed round, and were eager to hear what Face-of-god would
be saying. But or ever the Alderman could begin to question him, the
throng was cloven by new-comers, and these were the men who had been
sent to bring home the corpses of the Dusky Men: so they had cast
loaded hooks into the Weltering Water, and had dragged up him whom
Face-of-god had shoved into the eddy, and who had sunk like a stone
just where he fell, and now they were bringing him on a bier along
with him who had been slain a-land. They were set down in the place
before the Alderman, and men who had not seen them before looked
eagerly on them that they might behold the aspect of their foemen;
and nought lovely were they to look on; for the drowned man was
already bleached and swollen with the water, and the other, his face
was all wryed and twisted with that spear-thrust in the mouth.
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