“Are you the leader of this host?” the Dane said.

“Aye.  Who are you?” answered Olaf.

“I am Egil Thorarinsson, of Colchester,” he answered.  “And whoever you may be, I call on you to yield to Cnut, King of Denmark and England, and Norway also.”

“Maybe he is king of neither,” Olaf answered quietly.  “I am Olaf Haraldsson, and I am here to see if he shall be King of England.  So I call on you to submit peaceably to Ethelred, leaving Cnut to take his own land if he can.”

“We are Cnut’s men and Danes,” answered Egil, “and from your speech and name it would seem that you are no Englishman.  Now if you are Olaf the Thick, own your own king Cnut, and leave this Ethelred the Unredy to his own foolishness.”

“I am one of those Norsemen who hold that Cnut is no king of ours, and therefore I fight him wherever I can.  But if you will own Ethelred there shall be peace from him, and you will but do what the Danes of Guthrum’s host did in the old days—­hold the land you have won from an English overlord.”

“A fine overlord, forsooth,” said the Dane; “maybe one would think of it had he been a second Alfred—­but Ethelred the Unredy!  Not so, King Olaf.  Will you own Cnut, or must we make you?”

“It seems that we shall not agree until we have fought out this question,” said Olaf, laughing a little.

The Dane laughed back.

“Aye, I suppose not.  I would that you had a few more men.  But that is a hard lot in the centre.”

And so he looked down our line with an unmoved face, and turned his horse and rode slowly back to his own men.  Olaf came back to us with a confident look enough.

“There is a man worth fighting,” he said to me; “he is foster brother of Thorkel the High, who leads young Cnut, and he seems an honest warrior enough.”

Then all at once his face hardened, and he spoke in the sharp tone of command: 

“Get your spearmen forward—­the horsemen are coming first.”

And I saw even before he spoke that this was so, for they were closing in across their line from the wings, and forming up for an attack that they maybe thought would break the grim ranks of Olaf’s crew who were the strength of our centre.

So I gave the word, and my spearmen came quickly forward through the viking line, and there stood two deep, setting the butt ends of their spears firmly in the ground at their feet, and lowering the points to meet the horses breast high.  Olaf bade the front rank kneel on one knee and take both hands to the spear shaft, and then the thick hedge of glittering points was double.  I had never seen this plan before, but it was what Olaf had bidden us do if there was a charge of horsemen.  And I stood in the second rank with Prat beside me, and behind me were the men of Olaf’s shield wall.  I took my axe in my right hand instead of the sword, for the heavier weapon seemed best against what was coming.