Page:The Sundering Flood - Morris - 1898.djvu/198

 CHAPTER XXXIII. OSBERNE SEEKS TIDINGS OF ELFHILD.

OW when this stour was all over, and the men of the East Dale were still standing together, not very triumphantly, because of their slain, on the east side of the Cloven Knoll, the West Dalers came toward them treading the field of dead from which the Flood sundered them. As aforesaid, neither the East nor the West had heretofore been much wont to resort to that place because of their dread of the Dwarfs who dwelt in the cave above the whirlpool; but now the passion of battle, and the sorrow for the dead, and the perplexity of the harrying had swept all that out of their minds a while. So the chiefs of the West Dalers stood among the corpses of the aliens on the crown of the ness where Elfhild was wont to stand, and fell to talking with their brethren of the East; and the man who took up the word for them all was Wulfstan of Coldburne, a stead of the lower West Dale. And he fell to praising the good help which the East Dalers had given them by cleaving so manfully to the shot-stour, which he said had been their deliverance; for delivered they looked to be. Albeit, says he, they whom ye dealt with so manfully, and whom ye have now put to the road, be not the whole host of them, whereas while one moiety turned aside to the shooting, the other went on down the Dale and somewhat away from the Flood; and we