Hark the men of the cheaping, how loudly they cry
On the hook for the reaping of men doomed to die!
They all sing:
Heave spear up! fare forward, O Men of the Dale!
For the Warrior, our war-ward, shall hearken the tale.
Therewith they ceased a moment, and then gave a great and hearty
shout all together, and all their horns blew, and they moved on down
the hill as one man, slowly and with no jostling, the spear-men
first, and then they of the axe and the sword; and on their flanks
the deft archers loosed on the stumbling jostling throng of the Dusky
Men, who for their part came on drifting and surging up the road to
the hill.
But when those big spearmen of the Dale had gone a little way the
horns' voice died out, and their great-staved spears rose up from
their shoulders into the air, and stood so a moment, and then slowly
fell forward, as the oars of the longship fall into the row-locks,
and then over the shoulders of the foremost men showed the steel of
the five ranks behind them, and their own spears cast long bars of
shadow on the whiteness of the sunny road. No sound came from them
now save the rattle of their armour and the tramp of their steady
feet; but from the Dusky Men rose up hideous confused yelling, and
those that could free themselves from the tangle of the throng rushed
desperately against the on-rolling hedge of steel, and the whole
throng shoved on behind them.
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