went that they were better than the
smith's hammer-work, because they had had spells sung over them to keep
out steel or iron.

But for their weapons, they bore spears with shafts not very long, some
eight feet of our measure; and axes heavy and long-shafted; and bills
with great and broad heads; and some few, but not many of the kindred
were bowmen, and every freeman was girt with a sword; but of the swords
some were long and two-edged, some short and heavy, cutting on one edge,
and these were of the kind which they and our forefathers long after
called 'sax.' Thus were the freemen arrayed.

But for the thralls, there were many bows among them, especially among
those who were of blood alien from the Goths; the others bore short
spears, and feathered broad arrows, and clubs bound with iron, and knives
and axes, but not every man of them had a sword. Few iron helms they had
and no ringed byrnies, but most had a buckler at their backs with no sign
or symbol on it.

Thus then set forth the fighting men of the House of the Wolf toward the
Thing-stead of the Upper-mark where the hosting was to be, and by then
they were moving up along the side of Mirkwood-water it was somewhat past
high-noon.

But the stay-at-home people who had come down with them to the meadow
lingered long in that place; and much foreboding there was among them of
evil to come; and of the old folk, some remembered tales of the past days
of the Markmen, and how they had come from the ends of the earth, and the
mountains where none dwell now but the Gods of their kindreds; and many
of these tales told of their woes and their wars as they went from river
to river and from wild-wood to wild-wood before they had established
their Houses in the Mark, and fallen to dwelling there season by season
and year by year whether the days were good or ill. And it fell into
their hearts that now at last mayhappen was their abiding wearing out to
an end, and that the day should soon be when they should have to bear the
Hall-Sun through the wild-wood, and seek a new dwelling-place afar from
the troubling of these newly arisen Welsh foemen.

And so those of them who could not rid themselves of this foreboding were
somewhat heavier of heart than their wont was when the House went to the
War. For long had they abided there in the Mark, and the life was sweet
to them which they knew, and the life which they knew not was bitter to
them: and Mirkwood-water was become as