“All very well to put it in that way, comrade,” said Thorgils; “but where does my axe come in?  You are not fair, for, by Thor’s hammer, Erpwald, both of you had been mincemeat but for that.”

“Nay,” said I, laughing; “you and I were those who held back the crowd.  I could not have done it alone.”

“But you did, though,” the Norseman answered at once.  “Nevertheless, it was as well that I happened up in good time.”

Now we rode across the nearer hills until we could see into the fair valley which men call Taunton Deane since those days, and we saw the answering fires which told us that all was well at Watchet, for we had saved the little town.  Not until Gerent learned how few we were here would he dare to divide his forces.  Far off to the southward in the valley we could see the blue reek of his campfires, and it would seem that he had not yet moved on the Wessex border.

All the day we waited and watched, anxious and restless, but no attack came on us here, and the smoke of the camp grew no thinner at Norton.  A few Norsemen rode up to us from Watchet, and they said that no move was on hand yet, so far as they could tell.  And at last, as the sun was setting, and shone level on the slope of the Poldens, above which the Tor of Glastonbury sent a waving wreath of smoke into the air to bid Wessex gather against the ancient foe, we saw the long line of sparkling helms and spear points as our host marched from hill to causeway to the bridge that spans the Parrett.  Ina would hold the heights above Norton before morning.

But that made it the more needful that we should bide here till we were sent for, seeing that we guarded the flank of our advance; and hard it was to sit still and do it, with a battle pending yonder.  It was a long night to us, and hungry.

Early in the next morning there was heavy smoke on these hills that told of burning on the line of our march, and there was more away toward the far Blackdown hills, as if there were trouble beyond Tone.  And in the afternoon there fell a strange stillness on the woods round us, and I wondered.  There was never a buzzard or kite, raven or crow, left in all the woodland, and then I minded that overhead lately the birds of prey had all flown in one direction, and that toward where Norton lay.

It was the cry of the kite and the voice of the songbirds that I missed.  The birds of prey had gone, and in the cover their little quarry cowered in fear of the shadow of the broad wings which had crossed them so often.  Even now two of the great sea eagles were sailing inland, and from these strange signs we knew for certain that yonder a battlefield was spread for them, where Saxon and Welsh strove for mastery in the fair valley.  But we must pace the hill crest, silent and moody, waiting for some sign that might tell us of victory.

That came at last in the late afternoon.  Slowly there gathered, over the trees where Norton was, a haze that thickened into a smoke, and that grew into heavy dun clouds which rose and drifted even to the hilltops, for Norton was burning, and by that token we knew that Ina was victor.