The Ballad of Redpeak

[Sultan 3953]

 

 

Aurelius King,
Lord among Men,
August ring-giver and
Baron of Barons,
He with his son,
Tiberius Prince,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
Thereby Whitepeak,
Broke the shield-wall,
Hewed the Oakwood,
Hacked the war-shield,
Sons of Horen with hammered brands. 

 

Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

 

Bowed the spoiler,
Bent the Heanseman,
Fell the archers
Doomed to their death.
All the mountain with blood of the fighters
Whirled, from when first the great
Sun-star of the morning,
Lamp of the Lord God
Lord everlasting,
Glided over land till the glorious creature
Sank to its setting.

 

There lay many a man
Marred by the arrow,
Men of the Courland
Shot over shield.
There was the Heansemen
Weary of war. 

 

We the Renatians,
Long as the daylight
Lasted, in companies
Troubled the wall of the host that we hated;
Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone
Fiercely we hacked at the flyers before us. 

 

Mighty the Adrian,
Hard was his hand-play,
Sparing not any of
Those that with Tobias,
Warriors over the
Weltering waters
Borne in the old-bosom,
Drew to this land:
Doomed to their death. 

 

The Arborian good, in Courland blood
They steepd their hose and shoon;
They flew like fire about,
Till all the fray was done.

 

The moon was clear, the day drew near,
The spears in flinders flew,
But many a sorrowful courlander
Here this day the Reiterman slew.

 

Two young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke,
Seven nobles of the army of Tobias
Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers,
Courlander and Heansemen did the Romstun fell. 

 

Then the Courland leader,
Dire was his need of it,
Few were his following,
Fleeted his men to the forest
Saving his life on the fallow flood. 

 

So, King and Noblemen,
Each in their glory,
Went to his own in his land,
Glad of the war. 

 

Many a carcass they left to be carrion,
Many a livid one, many a salt-skin
Gone for the red-tailed eagle to tear it, and
Gone for the nibbed raven to rend it, and
Gave to the scavenging war-hawk to glut it, and
That gray beast, the wolf of the wild.