“Tear her away!” called a voice.

“Comrades,” I went on, “be not so mad.  To-night we have done that which has earned us death, but while the Empress lives you have a hostage in your hands with whom you can buy pardon.  As a lump of clay what worth is she to you?  Hark!  The regiments from the city!”

As I spoke, from the direction of the palace came a sound of many voices and of the tread of five thousand feet.

“True enough,” said Jodd, with composure.  “They are on us, and now it is too late to storm the palace.  Olaf, like many another man, you have lost your chance of glory for a woman, or, who knows, perhaps you’ve won it.  Well, comrades, as I take it you are not minded to fly and be hunted down like rats, only one thing remains—­to die in a fashion they will remember in Byzantium.  Olaf, you’d best mind the women; I will take command.  Ring round, comrades, ring round!  ’Tis a good place for it.  Set the wounded in the middle.  Keep that Empress living for the present, but when all is done, kill her.  We’ll be her escort to the gates of hell, for there she’s bound if ever woman was.”

Then, without murmur or complaint, almost in silence, indeed, they formed Odin’s Ring, that triple circle of the Northmen doomed to die; the terrible circle that on many a battlefield has been hidden at last beneath the heap of fallen foes.

The regiments moved up; there were three of them of full strength.  Irene stared about her, seeking some loophole of escape, and finding none.  Heliodore and I talked together in low tones, making our tryst beyond the grave.  The regiments halted within fifty paces of us.  They liked not the look of Odin’s Ring, and the ground over which they had marched and the fugitives with whom they had spoken told them that many of them looked their last upon the moon.

Some mounted generals rode towards us and asked who was in command of the Northmen.  When they learned that it was Jodd, they invited him to a parley.  The end of it was that Jodd and two others stepped twenty paces from our ranks, and met a councillor—­it was Stauracius—­and two of the generals in the open, where no treachery could well be practised, especially as Stauracius was not a man of war.  Here they talked together for a long while.  Then Jodd and his companions returned, and Jodd said, so that all might hear him: 

“Hearken.  These are the terms offered:  That we return to our barracks in peace, bearing our weapons.  That nothing be laid to our charge under any law, military or civil, by the State or private persons, for this night’s slaying and tumult, and that in guarantee thereof twelve hostages of high rank, upon whose names we have agreed, be given into our keeping.  That we retain our separate stations in the service of the Empire, or have leave to quit that service within three months, with the gratuity of a quarter’s pay, and go where we will unmolested.  But that, in return for these boons, we surrender the person of the Empress unharmed, and with her that of the General Olaf, to whom a fair trial is promised before a military court.  That with her own voice the Augusta shall confirm all these undertakings before she leaves our ranks.  Such is the offer, comrades.”