“He needs none.  Let us fight fairly or not at all.  The earl takes the axe.—­What say you, Radbard?  Griffin takes what he likes.”

“You keep to the axe after all, and yet say that it gives an advantage.”

“Axe against axe it does, but if your man chooses to take a twenty-foot spear and keep out of its way, we do not object.  We give him his own choice.”

Then the other second said frankly, “This is generous, Cadwal.  No more need be said.  But this young thane has not yet asked his earl whether it will suit him.”

“Faith, no,” said Havelok, laughing; “I was thinking what I should like myself, and nothing at all of the earl.”

So I went across to Ragnar, who was waiting patiently at one end of the clearing, while Griffin was pacing with uneven steps backward and forward at the other, and I told him what the question was.

“I thought it would be a matter of swords,” he said, “but I am Dane enough to like the axe best.  Settle it as you will.  Of course he knows naught of axe play, so that you are right in not pressing it on him.  He is a light man, and active, and maybe will be glad not even to try sword to sword; for look at the sort of bodkin he is wearing.”

The earl and we had the northern long sword, of course; but when I looked I saw that the Welsh had short, straight, and heavy weapons of about half the length of ours, and so even sword to sword seemed hard on the lighter man; wherein I was wrong, as I had yet to learn.

I went back, therefore, and told the others.

“The earl takes the axe, and the thane has his choice, as we have said.”

“We have to thank you,” said the other second, while Cadwal only laughed a short laugh, and bade us choose the ground with them.

There was no difficulty about that, for the light was clear and bright, and though the sun was up, the trees bid any bright rays that might be in the eyes of the fighters.  However, we set them across the light, so that all there was might be even; and then we agreed that if one was forced back to the edge of the clearing he was to be held beaten, as if we had been on an island.  It was nearly as good, for the shore of trees and brushwood was very plain and sharp.

Now Ragnar unslung his round shield from his shoulders, and took his axe from me, for I had carried it for him, and his face was quiet and steady, as the face of one should be who has a deed to do that must be seen through to the end.  But Griffin and his men talked quickly in their own tongue, and I had to tell them that we understood it well enough.  Then they looked at each other, and were silent suddenly.  I wondered what they, were about to say, for it seemed that my warning came just in time for them.

Griffin took a shield from the thane they called Cadwal, and it was square—­a shape that I had not seen before in use, though Witlaf had one like it on the wall at Stallingborough.  He said that it had been won from a chief by his forefathers when the English first came into the land, and that it was the old Roman shape.  It seemed unhandy to me, but I had no time to think of it for a moment, for now Cadwal had a last question.