Then Goldberga stooped to me, and laid her soft hand on my forehead, and took off my helm, so that the air came to me, and thereat I woke altogether.

“Brother,” she said, “you are restless and sorely wounded, as it seems.  It is not good that you should lie in this mist.”

At her voice the others woke, and for a while she talked with us in a low tone, cheering us.  And presently she asked of that strange request that I had made to her.

I told her, for it was a message that should not be kept back, thus given; and when he heard it, Withelm sighed a little, and said, “Would that we had all those who have fallen.  Yet if it is as they have asked our brother, our host will seem as strong as before we joined battle in the morning.  Leave this to me, brother, for it may be done.”

Then he rose up and went softly to where Idrys, the friend of Cadwal, lay, and spoke long with him.  It was true that Cadwal was slain, though I had not yet heard of it until he told me himself thus.

Then I slept heavily, while the others talked for a while.  It is a hard place at a wedge tip when Englishmen are against one; and I am not much use in a council.  Presently they would wake me if my word was wanted.

But it was not needed, for the sunlight woke me.  There was a growing stir in our lines and across the water also, and I looked round.  The mists were yet dense, for there was not enough breeze to stir the heavy folds of the banner, and Raven slept still with his arm round its staff.  Havelok was not here now, and I thought that he had gone to the camp with Goldberga, and would be back shortly.

Then I saw that our rear rank was already formed up, as I thought, and that is not quite the order of things, as a rule, and it seemed far off from the stream.  I thought that they should have asked me about this, for there were some of my courtmen in that line.

And then I saw that in the line was no movement, and no flash of arms, as when one man speaks to another, turning a little.  And before that line stood the form of a chief who leant on his broad spear, motionless and seeming watchful.  I knew him at once, and it was Cadwal, and those he commanded were the dead.  That was even to me an awesome sight, for in the mists they seemed ready and waiting for the word that would never come to their ears, resting on the spears that they could use no more.  It had been done by the marshmen in the dark hours of the morning, and from across the stream I saw Alsi’s men staring at the new force that they thought had come to help us.  There were men enough moving along our bank with food to us to prevent them seeing that this line stirred not at all.