The Riding To Lithend

by Gordon Bottomley

Genre: Suspense
Setting: Europe
Format of Original Source: Play
Recommended Adaptation Length:

Candidate for Adaptation? Not Likely

EXCERPT:

GUNNAR

What, are you there?

AUNUND

Yea, Gunnar, we are here.

GUNNAR (thrusting with the bill)

Then bide you there.

(AUNUND’S head sinks; THORGEIR’S rises in the same place.)

How many heads have you?

THORGEIR

But half as many as the feet we grow on.

GUNNAR

And I’ve not yet used up (thrusting again) all my hands.

(As he thrusts another man rises a little farther back, and leaps past him into the loft. Others follow, and GUNNAR is soon surrounded by many armed men, so that only the rising and falling of his bill is seen.)

The threshing-floor is full…. Up, up, brain-biter!

We work too late to-night–up, open the husks.

Oh, smite and pulse

On their anvil heads:

The smithy is full,

There are shoes to be made

For the hoofs of the steeds

Of the Valkyr girls….

FIRST MAN

Hack through the shaft….

SECOND MAN

Receive the blade

In the breast of a shield,

And wrench it round….

GUNNAR

For the hoofs of the steeds

Of the Valkyr girls

Who race up the night

To be first at our feast,

First in the play

With immortal spears

In deadly holes….

THIRD MAN

Try at his back….

MANY VOICES (shouting in confusion)

Have him down…. Heels on the bill…. Ahui, ahui….

(The bill does not rise.)

HROALD (with the breaking voice of a young man, high over all)

Father…. It is my blow…. It is I who kill him.

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