of Cuzco had left these lanes untrod, for of a sudden some warriors, who had outstripped me, vanished.  They had fallen into a pit covered over with earth laid upon canes, of which the bottom was set with sharp stakes.  Others, who were running along the lanes of open ground to right and left, also fell into pits of which there were scores all carefully prepared against the day of battle.  With trouble the Chancas were halted, but not before we had lost some hundreds of men.  Then we advanced again across that ground over which the Inca host had retreated.

At length we reached their lines, passing through a storm of arrows, and there began such a battle as I had never heard of or even dreamed.  With axes, stone-headed clubs and spears, both armies fought furiously, and though the Incas still outnumbered us by two to one, because of my training our regiments drove them back.  Lord after lord rushed at me with glaring eyes, but my mail turned their copper spears and knives of flint.  Oh!  Wave-Flame fed full that day, and if Thorgrimmer my forefather could have seen us from his home in Valhalla, surely he must have sworn by Odin that never had he given it such a feast.

The Inca warriors grew afraid and shrank back.

“This Red-Beard from the sea is indeed a god.  He cannot be slain!” I heard them cry.

Then Urco appeared, bloody and furious, shouting: 

“Cowards!  I will show you whether he cannot be slain.”

He rushed onward to meet—­not me, but Huaracha, who seeing that I was weary, had leapt in front of me.  They fought, and Huaracha went down and was dragged away by some of his servants.

Now Urco and I were face to face, he wielding a huge copper-headed club with which, as my mail could not be pierced, he thought to batter out my life.  I caught the blow upon my shield, but so great was the giant’s strength that it brought me to my knees.  Next second I was up and at him.  Shouting, I smote with both hands, for my shield had fallen.  The thick, turban-like headdress that Urco wore was severed, cut through as the axe had been, and Wave-Flame bit deep into the skull beneath.

Urco fell like a stunned ox and I sprang upon him to make an end.  Then it was that a rope was flung about my shoulders, a noosed rope that was hauled tight.  In vain I struggled.  I was thrown down; I was seized by a score of hands and dragged away into the heart of Urco’s host.

Waiting till a litter could be brought, they set me on my feet again, my arms still bound by the noose that these Indians call laso, which they know so well how to throw, the red sword Wave-Flame still hanging by its thong from my right wrist.  Whilst I stood thus, like a bull in a net, they gathered round, staring at me, not with hate as it seemed to me, but in fear and with reverence.  When at length the litter came they aided me to enter it quite gently.