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A PRETTY QUARREL
On one of those unattained, and unattainable pinnacles that are known
as the Bleaks of Eerie, an eagle was looking East with a hopeful
presage of blood.
For he knew, and rejoiced in the knowledge, that eastward over the
dells the dwarfs were risen in Ulk, and gone to war with the
demi-gods.
The demi-gods are they that were born of earthly women, but their
sires are the elder gods who walked of old among men. Disguised they
would go through the villages sometimes in summer evenings, cloaked
and unknown of men; but the younger maidens knew them and always ran
to them singing, for all that their elders said: in evenings long ago
they had danced to the woods of the oak-trees. Their children dwelt
out-of-doors beyond the dells of the bracken, in the cool and heathery
lands, and were now at war with the dwarfs.
Dour and grim were the demi-gods and had the faults of both parents,
and would not mix with men but claimed the right of their fathers, and
would not play human games but forever were prophesying, and yet were
more frivolous than their mothers were, whom the fairies had long
since buried in wild wood gardens with more than human rites.
And being irked at their lack of rights and ill content with the land,
and having no power at all over the wind and snow, and caring little
for the powers they had, the demi-gods became idle, greasy, and slow;
and the contemptuous dwarfs despised them ever.
The dwarfs were contemptuous of all things savouring of heaven, and of
everything that was even partly divine. They were, so it has been
said, of the seed of man; but, being squat and hairy like to the
beasts; they praised all beastly things, and bestiality was shown
reverence among them, so far as reverence was theirs to show. So most
of all they despised the discontent of the demi-gods, who dreamed of
the courts of heaven and power over wind and snow; for what better,
said the dwarfs, could demi-gods do than nose in the earth for roots
and cover their faces with mire, and run with the cheerful goats and
be even as they?
Now in their idleness caused by their discontent, the seed of the gods
and the maidens grew more discontented still, and only spake of or
cared for heavenly things; until the contempt of the dwarfs, who heard
of all these doings, was bridled no longer and it must needs be war.
They burned spice, dipped in blood and dried, before the chief of
their witches, sharpening their axes, and made war on the demi-gods.
They passed by night over the Oolnar Mountains, each dwarf with his
good axe, the old flint war-axe of his fathers, a night when no moon
shone, and they went unshod, and swiftly, to come on the demi-gods in
the darkness beyond the dells of Ulk, lying fat and idle and
contemptible.
And before it was light they found the heathery lands, and the
demi-gods lying lazy all over the side of a hill. The dwarfs stole
towards them warily in the darkness.
Now the art that the gods love most is the art of war: and when the
seed of the gods and those nimble maidens awoke and found it was war
it was almost as much to them as the godlike pursuits of heaven,
enjoyed in the marble courts; or power over wind and snow. They all
drew out at once their swords of tempered bronze, cast down to them
centuries since on stormy nights when their fathers, drew them and
faced the dwarfs, and casting their idleness from them, fell on them,
sword to axe. And the dwarfs fought hard that night, and bruised the
demi-gods sorely, hacking with those huge axes that had not spared the
oaks. Yet for all the weight of their blows and the cunning of their
adventure, one point they had overlooked: the demi-gods were
immortal.
As the fight rolled on towards morning the fighters were fewer and
fewer, yet for all the blows of the dwarfs men fell upon one side
only.
Dawn came and the demi-gods were fighting against no more than six,
and the hour that follows dawn, and the last of the dwarfs was gone.
And when the light was clear on that peak of the Bleaks of Eerie the
eagle left his crag and flew grimly East, and found it was as he had
hoped in the matter of blood.
But the demi-gods lay down in their heathery lands, for once content
though so far from the courts of heaven, and even half forgot their
heavenly rights, and sighed no more for power over wind and snow.
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