Now began the third day of that battle. All the morning was the same tale to tell of every wounded man that found his way back, of hard fighting and the King’s men hard put to it, and no sight of the end yet. Things seemed to be worse as the hours went by, and the news worse and less hopeful that the wounded brought. But in the afternoon it was not that the news was worser but that the stream of it dried up. They that now came in from the fight had the look of men who know well that it is done of them. They would say naught but this only: that there was battle yet sharper than on either of the former days, and the King’s folk beaten back step by step, yet holding together.
The day was now three parts done, and Queen Sigrid sat with her women in her bower the windows whereof looked south out of Upsala. Till afternoon she had beheld the battle from Olaf’s howe; then, as if angry in her proud heart at the long uncertainty of that which she had no might to sway nor hasten, she came within doors again and sat there silent and waiting. But no end came: naught save that ceaseless sea-sound only of this third day’s fighting, flooding now nigh to the outer fields and home-meads of Upsala.
On a sudden, as, lost in her brooding, the Queen rested her gaze on the steep crest of Windbergsfell that showed on the left, a mile away belike, sharp against the sky, it was as if smoke came all along the edge of the fell, and in the next instant came a rumble as of thunder, drowning the dull growl of the battle. The Queen stood up. The hill’s edge was all hidden now with a dirty brown smoke-pall. The muttering rose to a roar, pulsing and pausing and swelling again. It seemed to them there as if the very timbers of the house were shaken. One of her women screamed and cried out that here was the world’s end come upon them and the beginning of Ragnarok. The child Olaf ran to his mother’s skirt. Sigrid abode erect and unmoved, but her face was white as death. There seemed to be now a strange and evil silence. Then the old steady battle-rumour began again. Yet not so steady now. Little by little it seemed to die down again, as if the battle were rolled away, or as if so many were slain now that they that yet lived availed not to hold up that battle-din. That cloud that hung on the fell’s brow thinned and lightened.
The Queen went out into the garth, and so out and on to Upsala brink. Folk were thronging there, one saying one thing and one saying another. None knew what was befallen. One man said that the main fell was overset and fallen down upon the King’s army and Styrbiorn’s. There was fog in the air over Fyrisfield, and it hung thickest on the skirts of the fell to the eastward. There was naught to see. The Queen came again to her bower and sat in her chair there. She had taken a sword from the bottom of a chest she had by her, and she sat with the sword unsheathed and across her knees. Her women asked her what she meant to do with that sword. She drew back her lips and smiled. “That question showeth little wit. Do you think I will be taken living by Styrbiorn?”
At sundown came that old man Thorgnyr riding into the King’s garth. They brought him in to the Queen where she sat waiting. “Speak quickly,” she said. “There is not a man come hither since that befell, and I know nothing. Must it be tomorrow too?”
Thorgnyr said, “It is ended.”
The Queen caught her breath.
“Have no fear,” he said. “True it is that we were almost clean done; but in the nick of time to save us befell so great a wonder as you must have seen and heard, Queen, that the scree burst up on the fell, and that came all adown upon the host of Styrbiorn and slew him a great part of his folk, but our own folk being away from the mountain took no hurt. And in the dust and pother of it, this good thing befell too, that the Dane-King (whom he had kept beside him until now) took rede to escape away, and galloped a-horseback over to his own people on their left beside the river, and made them give over and come out from the battle and flee away. So were the rest taken now by our folk both in front and in flank, and not yet free from the scree-fall. And now of his army is almost nothing left than a shadow thereof. And it is finished now, all save the pursuit and slaying.”
“What of him?” said the Queen. “What of Styrbiorn?”
“The last I saw of him,” answered Thorgnyr, “he with a score were stood together back to back on a knoll of grass in the
