And they went on building the towers above the height of the roof And near the top of them they made homes for archers, little turrets that leaned like swallows’ nests out from each tower, high places where they could see and shoot and not be seen from below.  And little narrow passages wound away behind perched battlements of stone, by which archers could slip from place to place, and shoot from here or from there and never be known.  So were built in that distant age the towers of Castle Rodriguez.

And one day four weeks from the felling of the first oak, the period of his promise being accomplished, the King of Shadow Valley blew his horn.  And standing by what had been the bowmen’s cottage, now all shut in by sheer walls of Castle Rodriguez, he gathered his bowmen to him.  And when they were all about him he gave them their orders.  They were to go by stealth to the village of Lowlight, and were to be by daylight before the house of Don Alderon; and, whether wed or unwed, whether she fled or folk defended the house, to bring Dona Serafina of the Valley of Dawnlight to be the chatelaine of Castle Rodriguez.

For this purpose he bade them take with them a chariot that he thought magnificent, though the mighty timbers that gave grandeur to Castle Rodriguez had a cumbrous look in the heavy vehicle that was to the bowmen’s eyes the triumphal car of the forest.  So they took their bows and obeyed, leaving the craftsmen at their work in the castle, which was now quite roofed over, towers and all.  They went through the forest by little paths that they knew, going swiftly and warily in the bowmen’s way:  and just before nightfall they were at the forest’s edge, though they went no farther from it than its shadows go in the evening.  And there they rested under the oak trees for the early part of the night except those whose art it was to gather news for their king; and three of those went into Lowlight and mixed with the villagers there.

When white mists moved over the fields near dawn and wavered ghostly about Lowlight, the green bowman moved with them.  And just out of hearing of the village, behind wild shrubs that hid them, the bowmen that were coming from the forest met the three that had spent the night in taverns of Lowlight.  And the three told the hundred of the great wedding that there was to be in the Church of the Renunciation that morning in Lowlight:  and of the preparations that were made, and how holy men had come from far on mules, and had slept the night in the village, and the Bishop of Toledo himself would bless the bridegroom’s sword.  The bowmen therefore retired a little way and, moving through the mists, came forward to points whence they could watch the church, well concealed on the wild plain, which here and there gave up a field to man but was mostly the playground of wild creatures whose ways were the bowmen’s ways.  And here they waited.