The House of the Wolfings
kindred of the Bearings lacketh a roof; and its elders and women and
children are gone into captivity. What is this? Was it a light thing
that gangrel thieves should burn and waste in Mid-mark and depart unhurt,
that ye stand here with clean blades and cold bodies?"
Said Otter: "Thou grievest for the hurt of thine House, Arinbiorn; but
this at least is good, that though ye have lost the timber of your house
ye have not lost its flesh and blood; the shell is gone, but the kernel
is saved: for thy folk are by this time in the wood with the Wolfing stay-
at-homes, and among these are many who may fight on occasion, so they are
safe as for this time: the Romans may not come at them to hurt them."
Said Arinbiorn: "Had ye time to learn all this, Otter, when ye fled so
fast before the Romans, that the father tarried not for the son, nor the
son for the father?"
He spoke in a loud voice so that many heard him, and some deemed it evil;
for anger and dissension between friends seemed abroad; but some were so
eager for battle, that the word of Arinbiorn seemed good to them, and
they laughed for pride and anger.
Then Otter answered meekly, for he was a wise man and a bold: "We fled
not, Arinbiorn, but as the sword fleeth, when it springeth up from the
iron helm to fall on the woollen coat. Are we not now of more avail to
you, O men of the Bearings, than our dead corpses would have been?"
Arinbiorn answered not, but his face waxed red, as if he were struggling
with a weight hard to lift: then said Otter:
"But when will Thiodolf and the main battle be with us?"
Arinbiorn answered calmly: "Maybe in a little hour from now, or somewhat
more."
Said Otter: "My rede is that we abide him here, and when we are all met
and well ordered together, fall on the Romans at once: for then shall we
be more than they; whereas now we are far fewer, and moreover we shall
have to set on them in their ground of vantage."
Arinbiorn answered nothing; but an old man of the Bearings, one
Thorbiorn, came up and spake:
"Warriors, here are we talking and taking counsel, though this is no
Hallowed Thing to bid us what we shall do, and what we shall forbear; and
to talk thus is less like warriors than old women wrangling over the why
and wherefore of a broken crock. Let the War-duke rule here, as is but
meet and right. Yet if I might speak and not break the peace of the
Goths, then would I say this, that it might be better for us to fall on
these Romans at once before they have cast up a dike about them, as Fox
telleth is their wont, and that even in an hour they may do much."
As he spake there was a murmur of assent about him, but Otter spake
sharply, for he was grieved.
"Thorbiorn, thou art old, and shouldest not be void of prudence. Now it
had been better for thee to have been in the wood to-day to order the
women and the swains according to thine ancient wisdom than to egg on my
young warriors to fare unwarily. Here will I abide Thiodolf."
Then Thorbiorn reddened and was wroth; but Arinbiorn spake:
"What is this to-do? Let the War-duke rule as is but right: but I am now
become a man of Thiodolf's company; and he bade me haste on before to
help all I might. Do thou as thou wilt, Otter: for Thiodolf shall be
here in an hour's space, and if much diking shall be done in an hour, yet
little slaying, forsooth, shall be done, and that especially if the foe
is all armed and slayeth women and children. Yea if the Bearing women be
all slain, yet shall not Tyr make us new ones out of the stones of the
waste to wed with the Galtings and the fish-eating Houses?--this is easy
to be done forsooth. Yea, easier than fighting the Romans and overcoming
them!"
And he was very wrath, and turned away; and again there was a murmur and
a hum about him. But while these had been speaking aloud, Sweinbiorn had
been talking softly to some of the younger men, and now he shook his
naked sword in the air and spake aloud and sang:
"Ye tarry, Bears of Battle! ye linger, Sons of the Worm!
Ye crouch adown, O kindreds, from the gathering of the storm!
Ye say, it shall soon pass over and we shall fare afield
And reap the wheat with the war-sword and winnow in the shield.
But where shall be the corner wherein ye then shall abide,
And where shall be the woodland where the whelps of the bears shall
hide
When 'twixt the snowy mountains and the edges of the sea
These men have swept the wild-wood and the fields where men may be
Of every living sword-blade, and every quivering spear,
And in the southland cities the yoke of slaves ye bear?
Lo ye! whoever follows I fare to sow the seed
Of the days to be hereafter and the deed that comes of deed."
Therewith he waved his sword over his head, and made as if he would spur
onward. But Arinbiorn thrust through the press and outwent him and cried
out:
"None goeth before Arinbiorn the Old when the battle is pitched in the
meadows of the kindred. Come, ye sons of the Bear, ye children of the
Worm! And come ye, whosoever hath a will to see stout men die!"
Then on he rode nor looked behind him, and the riders of the Bearings and
the Wormings drew themselves out of the throng, and followed him, and
rode clattering over the meadow towards Wolfstead. A few of the others
rode with them, and yet but a few. For they remembered the holy Folk-
mote and the oath of the War-duke, and how they had chosen Otter to be
their leader. Howbeit, man looked askance at man, as if in shame to be
left behind.
But Otter bethought him in the flash of a moment, "If these men ride
alone, they shall die and do nothing; and if we ride with them it may be
that we shall overthrow the Romans, and if we be vanquished, it shall go
hard but we shall slay many of them, so that it shall be the easier for
Thiodolf to deal with them."
Then he spake hastily, and bade certain men abide at the ford for a
guard; then he drew his sword and rode to the front of his folk, and
cried out aloud to them:
"Now at last has come the time to die, and let them of the Markmen who
live hereafter lay us in howe. Set on, Sons of Tyr, and give not your
lives away, but let them be dearly earned of our foemen."
Then all shouted loudly and gladly; nor were they otherwise than
exceeding glad; for now had they forgotten all other joys of life save
the joy of fighting for the kindred and the days to be.
So Otter led them forth, and when he heard the whole company clattering
and thundering on the earth behind him and felt their might enter into
him, his brow cleared, and the anxious lines in the face of the old man
smoothed themselves out, and as he rode along the soul so stirred within
him that he sang out aloud:
"Time was when hot was the summer and I was young on the earth,
And I grudged me every moment that lacked its share of mirth.
I woke in the morn and was merry and all the world methought
For me and my heart's deliverance that hour was newly wrought.
I have passed through the halls of manhood, I have reached the doors
of eld,
And I have been glad and sorry, but ever have upheld
My heart against all trouble that none might call me sad,
But ne'er came such remembrance of how my heart was glad
In the afternoon of summer 'neath the still unwearied sun
Of the days when I was little and all deeds were hopes to be won,
As now at last it cometh when e'en in such-like tide,
For the freeing of my trouble o'er the fathers' field I ride."
Many men perceived that he sang, and saw that he was merry, howbeit few
heard his very words, and yet all were glad of him.
Fast they rode, being wishful to catch up with the Bearings and the
Wormings, and soon they came anigh them, and they, hearing the thunder of
the horse-hoofs, looked and saw that it was the company of Otter, and so
slacked their speed till they were all joined together with joyous
shouting and laughter. So then they ordered the ranks anew and so set
forward in great joy without haste or turmoil toward Wolfstead and the
Romans. For now the bitterness of their fury and the sourness of their
abiding wrath were turned into the mere joy of battle; even as the clear
red and sweet wine comes of the ugly ferment and rough trouble of the
must.
CHAPTER XXIII--THIODOLF MEETETH THE ROMANS IN THE WOLFING MEADOW
It was scarce an hour after this that the footmen of Thiodolf came out of
the thicket road on to the meadow of the Bearings; there saw they men
gathered on a rising ground, and they came up to them and saw how some of
them were looking with troubled faces towards the ford and what lay
beyond it, and some toward the wood and the coming of Thiodolf. But
these were they whom Otter had bidden abide Thiodolf there, and he had
sent two messengers to them for Thiodolf's behoof that he might have due
tidings so soon as he came out of the thicket: the first told how Otter
had been compelled in a manner to fall on the Romans along with the
riders of the Bearings and the Wormings, and the second who had but just
then come, told how the Markmen had been worsted by the Romans, and had
given back from the Wolfing dwellings, and were making a stand against
the foemen in the meadow betwixt the ford and Wolfstead.
Now when Thiodolf heard of these tidings he stayed not to ask long
questions, but led the whole host straightway down to the ford, lest the
remnant of Otter's men should be driven down there, and the Romans should
hold the western bank against him.
At the ford there was none to withstand them, nor indeed any man at all;
for the men whom Otter had set there, when they heard that the battle had
gone against their kindred, had ridden their ways to join them. So
Thiodolf crossed over the ford, he and his in good order all afoot, he
like to the others; but for him he was clad in the Dwarf-wrought Hauberk,
but was unhelmeted and bare no shield. Throng-plough was naked in his
hand as he came up all dripping on to the bank and stood in the meadow of
the Wolfings; his face was stern and set as he gazed straight onward to
the place of the fray, but he did not look as joyous as his wont was in
going down to the battle.
Now they had gone but a short way from the ford before the noise of the
fight and the blowing of horns came down the wind to them, but it was a
little way further before they saw the fray with their eyes; because the
ground fell away from the river somewhat at first, and then rose and fell
again before it went up in one slope toward the Wolfing dwellings.
But when they were come to the top of the next swelling of the ground,
they beheld from thence what they had to deal with; for there round about
a ground of vantage was the field black with the Roman host, and in the
midst of it was a tangle of struggling men and tossing spears, and
glittering swords.
So when they beheld the battle of their kindred they gave a great shout
and hastened onward the faster; and they were ordered into the
wedge-array and Thiodolf led them, as meet it was. And now even as they
who were on the outward edge of the array and could see what was toward
were looking on the battle with eager eyes, there came an answering shout
down the wind, which they knew for the voice of the Goths amid the
foemen, and then they saw how the ring of the Romans shook and parted,
and their array fell back, and lo the company of the Markmen standing
stoutly together, though sorely minished; and sure it was that they had
not fled or been scattered, but were ready to fall one over another in
one band, for there were no men straggling towards the ford, though many
masterless horses ran here and there about the meadow. Now, therefore,
none doubted but that they would deliver their friends from the Romans,
and overthrow the foemen.