“So I fear,” answered Godrith, “that thy countryman Rolf found; for the Welch beat him sadly, and the reason was plain. He insisted on using horses where no horses could climb, and attiring men in full armour to fight against men light and nimble as swallows, that skim the earth, then are lost in clouds. Harold, more wise, turned our Saxons into Welchmen, flying as they flew, climbing where they climbed; it has been as a war of the birds. And now there rests but the eagle, in his last lonely eyrie.”
“Thy battles have improved thy eloquence much, Messire Godree,” said the Norman, condescendingly. “Nevertheless, I cannot but think a few light horse——”
“Could scale yon mountain-brow?” said Godrith, laughing, and pointing to Penmaen-mawr.
The Norman looked and was silent, though he thought to himself, “That Sexwolf was no such dolt after all!”
BOOK VII.
THE WELCH KING. [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
CHAPTER I.
The sun had just cast his last beams over the breadth of water into which Conway, or rather Cyn-wy, “the great river,” emerges its winding waves. Not at that time existed the matchless castle, which is now the monument of Edward Plantagenet, and the boast of Wales. But besides all the beauty the spot took from nature, it had even some claim from ancient art. A rude fortress rose above the stream of Gyffin, out of the wrecks of some greater Roman hold [159], and vast ruins of a former town lay round it; while opposite the fort, on the huge and ragged promontory of Gogarth, might still be seen, forlorn and grey, the wrecks of the imperial city, destroyed ages before by lightning.
All these remains of a power and a pomp that Rome in vain had bequeathed to the Briton, were full of pathetic and solemn interest, when blent with the thought, that on yonder steep, the brave prince of a race of heroes, whose line transcended, by ages, all the other royalties of the North, awaited, amidst the ruins of man, and in the stronghold which nature yet gave, the hour of his doom.