across bare rocks. Muhammad would have us ere another sun set.
At dawn we topped a rise and saw before us, spreading to the sky-line, the calm waters of the Green Sea – the Persian Gulf. Our steeds were done; they staggered and tossed their heads, legs wide braced. In the light of dawn I saw my comrades’ drawn and haggard faces. The girl’s eyes were shadowed and she reeled with weariness though she spoke no word of complaint. As for me, with a single half hour’s sleep for three nights, all seemed dim and like a dream at times till I shook myself into wakefulness. But Sir Eric was iron, brain and spirit and body. An inner fire drove him and spurred him on, and his soul blazed so brightly that it overcame the weakness and weariness of his body. Aye, but it is a hard road, the road of Azrael!
We came upon the shores of the sea, leading our stumbling mounts. On the Arab side the shores of the Green Sea are level and sandy, but on the Persian side they are high and rocky. Many broken boulders lined the steep shores so that the steeds had much ado to pick their way among them.
Sir Eric found a nook between two great boulders and bade the girl sleep a little, while I remained by her to keep watch. He himself would go along the shore and see if he might find a fisher’s boat, for it was his intention that we should go out on the face of the sea in an effort to escape the Persians. He strode away among the rocks, straight and tall and very gallant in appearance, with the early light glinting on his armor.
The girl slept the sleep of utter exhaustion and I sat nearby with my scimitar across my knees, and pondered the madness of Franks and sultans. My leg was sore and stiff from the spear thrust, I was athirst and dizzy for sleep and from hunger, and saw naught but death for all ahead.
At last I found myself sinking into slumber in spite of myself, so, the girl being fast asleep, I rose and limped about, that the pain of my wound might keep me awake. I made my way about a shoulder of the cliff a short distance away – and a strange thing came suddenly to pass.
One moment I was alone among the rocks, the next instant a huge warrior had leaped from behind them. I knew in a flashing instant that he was some sort of a Frank, for his eyes were light and they blazed like a tiger’s, and his skin was very white, while from under his helmet flowed flaxen locks. Flaxen, likewise, was his thick beard, and from his helmet branched the horns of a bull so at first glance I thought him some fantastic demon of the wilderness.
All this I perceived in an instant as with a deafening roar, the giant rushed upon me, swinging a heavy, flaring edged axe in his right hand. I should have leaped aside, smiting as he missed, as I had done against a hundred Franks before. But the fog of half-sleep was on me and my wounded leg was stiff.
I caught his swinging axe on my buckler and my forearm snapped like a twig. The force of that terrific stroke dashed me earthward, but I caught myself on one knee and thrust upward, just as the Frank loomed above me. My scimitar point caught him beneath the beard and rent his jugular; yet even so, staggering drunkenly and spurting blood, he gripped his axe with both hands, and with legs wide braced, heaved the axe high above his head. But life went from him ere he could strike.
Then as I rose, fully awake now from the pain of my broken arm, men came from the rocks on all sides and made a ring of gleaming steel about me. Such men I had never seen. Like him I had slain, they were tall and massive with red or yellow hair and beards and fierce light eyes. But they were not clad in mail from head to foot like the Crusaders. They wore horned helmets and shirts of scale mail which came almost to their knees but left their throats and arms bare, and most of them wore no other armor at all. They held on their left arms heavy kite shaped shields, and in their right hands wide edged axes. Many wore heavy golden armlets, and chains of gold about their necks.
Surely such men had never before trod the sands of the East. There stood before them, as a chief stands, a very tall Frank whose hauberk was of silvered scales. His helmet was wrought with rare skill and instead of an axe he bore a long heavy sword in a richly worked sheath. His face was as a man that dreams, but his strange light eyes were wayward as the gleams of the sea.
Beside him stood another, stranger than he; this man was very old, with a wild white beard and white elf locks. Yet his giant frame was unbowed and his thews were as oak and iron. Only one eye he had and it held a strange gleam, scarcely human. Aye, he seemed to reckon little of what went about him, for his lion-like head was lifted and his strange eye stared through and beyond that on which it rested, into the deeps of the world’s horizons.
Now I saw that the end of the road was come for me. I flung down my scimitar and folded my arms.
“God gives,” said I, and waited for the stroke.
And then there sounded a swift clank of armor and the warriors whirled as Sir Eric burst roughly through the ring and faced them. Thereat a sullen roar went up and they pressed forward. I caught up my scimitar to stand at Sir Eric’s back, but the tall Frank in the silvered mail raised his hand and spoke in a strange tongue, whereat all fell silent. Sir Eric answered in his own tongue: “I cannot understand Norse. Can any of you speak English or Norman- French?”
“Aye,” answered the tall Frank whose height was half a head more than Sir Eric’s. “I am Skel Thorwald’s son, of Norway, and these are my wolves. This Saracen has slain one of my carles. Is he your friend?”
“Friend and brother-at-arms,” said Sir Eric. “If he slew, he had just reason.”
“He sprang on me like a tiger from ambush,” said I wearily. “They are your breed, brother. Let them take my head if they will; blood must pay for blood. Then they will save you and the girl from Muhammad.”
“Am I a dog?” growled Sir Eric, and to the warriors he said: “Look at your wolf; think you he struck a blow after his throat was cut? Yet here is Kosru Malik with a broken arm. Your wolf smote first; a man may defend his life.”
“Take him then, and go your ways,” said Skel Thorwald’s son slowly. “We would not take an unfair advantage of the odds, but I like not your pagan.”
“Wait!” exclaimed Sir Eric. “I ask your aid! We are hunted by a Moslem lord as wolves hunt deer. He seeks to drag a Christian girl into his harem – ”
“Christian!” rumbled Skel Thorwald’s son. “But ten days agone I slew a horse to Thor.”
I saw a slow desperation grow in Sir Eric’s deep-lined face.
“I thought even you Norse had forsaken your pagan gods,” said he. “But let it rest – if there be manhood among ye, aid us, not for my sake nor the sake of my friend, but for the sake of the girl who sleeps among those rocks.”
At that from among the rest thrust himself a warrior my height and of mighty build. More than fifty winters he had known, yet his red hair and beard were untouched by grey, and his blue eyes blazed as if a constant rage flamed in his soul.
“Aye!” he snarled. “Aid ye ask, you Norman dog! You, whose breed overran the heritage of my people – whose kinsmen rode fetlock deep in good Saxon blood – now you howl for aid and succor like a trapped jackal in this naked land. I will see you in Hell before I lift axe to defend you or yours.”
“Nay, Hrothgar,” the ancient white bearded giant spoke for the first time and his voice was like the call of a deep throated trumpet. “This knight is alone among we many. Entreat him not harshly.”
Hrothgar seemed abashed, angry, yet wishful to please the old one.
“Aye, my king,” he muttered half sullenly, half apologetically.
Sir Eric started: “King?”
“Aye!” Hrothgar’s eyes blazed anew; in truth he was a man of constant spleen. “Aye – the monarch your cursed William tricked and trapped, and beat by a trick to cast from his throne. There stands Harold, the son of Godwin, rightful king of England!”
Sir Eric doffed his helmet, staring as if at a ghost.
“But I do not understand,” he stammered. “Harold fell at Senlac – Edith Swan-necked found him among the slain – ”
Hrothgar snarled like a wounded wolf, while his eyes flamed and flickered with blue lights of hate.
“A trick to cozen tricksters,” he snarled. “That was an unknown chief of the west Edith showed to the priests. I, a lad of ten, was among those that bore King Harold from the field by night, senseless and blinded.”
His fierce eyes grew gentler and his rough voice strangely soft.
“We bore him beyond the reach of the dog William and for months he lay nigh unto death. But he lived, though the Norman arrow had taken his eye and a sword-slash across the head had left him strange and fey.”
Again the lights of fury flickered in the eyes of Hrothgar.
“Forty-three years of wandering and harrying on the Viking path!” he rasped. “William robbed the king of his kingdom, but not of men who would follow and die for him. See ye these Vikings of Skel Thorwald’s son? Northmen,
