Page:Departmental Ditties and Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads, Kipling, 1899.djvu/264

80 That night, the slow mists of the evening dropped,

Dropped as a cloth upon the dead, but rose

A little higher, to a young girl's height;

Till all the valley glittered like a lake,

Beneath the moonlight, filled with sluggish mist.

That night, the Red Horse grazed beyond the Dam

A stone's throw from the troughs. Men heard him feed,

And those that heard him sickened where they lay.

Thus came the sickness of Er-Heb, and slew

Of men a score, and of the women eight,

And of the children two.

Because the road

To Gorukh was a road of enemies,

And Ao-Safai was blocked with early snow,

We could not flee from out the Valley. Death

Smote at us in a slaughter-pen, and Kysh

Was mute as Yabosh, though the goats were slain;

And the Red Horse grazed nightly by the stream,

And later, outward, towards the Unlighted Shrine,

And those that heard him sickened where they lay.