The fight hung doubtful.  As in a dream, I watched the giant Jodd cut down a gorgeous captain, the axe shearing through his golden armour as though it were but silk.  I watched a comrade of my own fall beneath a spear-thrust.  I gazed at the face of Heliodore, who stared wide-eyed at the red scene, and at the white-lipped Irene, who was clinging to my arm.  Now we were being pressed back again, we who at this point had at most two hundred men, some of whom were down, to bear the onslaught of twice that number, and, do what I would, my fingers strayed to my sword-hilt.

Our triple line bent in like a bow and began to break.  The scales of war hung on the turn, when, from the dense belt of trees upon our left, suddenly rose the cry of “Valhalla!  Valhalla!  Victory or Valhalla!” for which I, who had overheard Jodd’s orders, was waiting.  These were his orders—­that half of the Northmen should creep down behind the belt of trees in their dense shadow, and thus outflank the foe.

Forth they sprang by companies of fifty, the moonlight gleaming on their mail, and there, three hundred yards away, a new battle was begun.  Now the Greeks in front of us, fearing for their rear, wavered a moment and fell back, perhaps, ten paces.  I saw the opportunity and could bear no more, who before all things was a soldier.

Shouting to some of our wounded to watch the women, I drew my sword and leapt forward.

“I come, Northmen!” I cried, and was greeted with a roar of: 

“Olaf Red-Sword!  Follow Olaf Red-Sword!” for so the soldiers named me.

“Steady, Northmen!  Shoulder to shoulder, Northmen!” I cried back.  “Now at them!  Charge! Valhalla!  Victory or Valhalla!”

Down the slope they went before our rush.  In thirty paces they were but a huddled mob, on which our swords played like lightnings.  We rolled them back on to their supports, and those supports, outflanked, began to flee.  We swept through and through them.  We slew them by hundreds, we trod them beneath our victorious feet, and—­oh! in that battle a strange thing happened to me.  I thought I saw my dead brother Ragnar fighting at my side; aye, and I thought I heard him cry to me, in that lost, remembered voice: 

“The old blood runs in you yet, you Christian man!  Oh! you fight well, you Christian man.  We of Valhalla give you greetings, Olaf Red-Sword. Valhalla!  Valhalla!  Victory or Valhalla!”

It was done.  Some were fled, but more were dead, for, once at grips, the Northman showed no mercy to the Greek.  Back we came, those who were left of us, for many, perhaps a hundred, were not, and formed a ring round the women and the wounded.

“Well done, Olaf,” said Heliodore; but Irene only looked at me with a kind of wonder in her eyes.

Now the leaders of the Northmen began to talk among themselves, but although from time to time they glanced at me, they did not ask me to join in their talk.  Presently Jodd came forward and said in his slow voice: